General Health Article Archive

Powerlifting for All

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Matt Posted in Motivation, Strength Training Leave a comment

Check out one of my favorite interviews below stressing the importance of lifting…and lifting HEAVY! This goes for males and females. Ladies, you will NOT get bulky! If you haven’t taken my word on that yet maybe you will be convinced by Jean Fry, a very attractive and very successful powerlifter. Thank you Jordan with Syatt Fitness for the great interview.

JS: Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview, Jean. You’ve honestly been a huge inspiration, not only to me, but to thousands of people world-wide as a strength athlete and fitness professional. I know my readers will tremendously benefit from listening to what you have to say.

JF: That’s so sweet, Jordan, thank you! I really am incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to train where I do, to have a loving family that supports me, and to be able to teach and affect so many people with my work. I sure hope they benefit from what I teach them…. But truth is, they are really the ones who inspire me!

JS: Alright, well before we get into the meat of the interview would you mind briefly telling everyone a little bit about yourself such as who you are, what you do, where you train, and why you began training in the first place?

JF: Well, I got my first taste of the gym at 15; I was the extremely sheltered, shy only child who had always wanted to be a track sprinter, but therefore lacked the confidence to do it until high school. When a coworker introduced me to my now-good friend Scott Vickery, a gym owner and GREAT trainer nearby, it was game on! He took me under his wing and not only got me ready for track, but taught me how to TRAIN, which developed into competing in powerlifting. Keeping a consistent schedule was tough once I joined the United States Air Force (USAF) and then went off to school at Ohio State, but I never stopped!

Ten years later, I have since graduated, gotten married, become a personal trainer/ nutrition coach, and most recently accepted a position as Health and Wellness Director for the YMCA. Since getting the invite from Louie Simmons himself at the Pro/Am in 2007, I have trained on the morning crew at Westside Barbell, and couldn’t be more grateful every day I walk into that place! It’s so humbling to know that so many of the greats were/ are there, too!

JS: And just for the record, would you mind telling everyone your personal best 1 repetition maximum (1RM) in the Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift?

JF: Of course! My most recent meet was about 6 weeks ago (at the Powerstation Pro-Am), marking my 4-yr anniversary at Westside. I squatted 415lbs and deadlifted 375lbs at a body-weight of 123lbs; I also scraped out a pro total with 1025lbs (despite having a terrible bench day). My best benches to date are 250lbs at a body-weight of 123lbs and 230lbs at a body-weight of 114lbs.

Jean with 415lbs on her back.

JS: Many women tend to shy away from Powerlifting and strength training in general as they’re under the impression it will cause them to instantly bulk-up. Instead, these women feel their time would be better spent on cardio machines, while occasionally making use of those neatly color-coordinated 2.5-5lb dumbbells. If you could give these women any advice, what would you tell them?

JF: Ahh, the CARDIO QUEENS! Look- here’s the deal… and you may have all heard this before but let me re-iterate. We as natural-borne females have not had the same amounts of testosterone “bestowed” upon us that most males have been. Thus, our ability to build muscle to those extremes is non-existent. So get off your pretty little machine and DO SOMETHING worthwhile! I am living proof. I started the sport when I was 15 years old and 117lbs (keep in mind, I was burning more cals via track, too). Ten years of heavy-lifting later, I am 5’5 and 130lbs, and wore my high school prom dress to a USAF formal dinner last year.

JS: What about the women who do cardio because they legitimately enjoy it? Is it possible to incorporate strength training and cardio at the same time? Should one be made a priority over the other?

JF: Sure! Lots of people do cardio for fun (not my preferred method of enjoyment, but hey!). Some people like it because it enables them to “zone out,” which is fine. Others do it just because they like how jacked their heart rate gets and the sweat that starts rolling in a brief amount of time. For those people, circuit training with weights would really be a great option to get both aerobic and anaerobic in at once. Even if you are competing in marathons, a well-balanced training regime should NEVER consist of cardio alone.

However, in my opinion, I do believe strength should take precedence (for example, my cardio consists of dragging a sled, weighted box jumps, and a long, high-incline hike on the treadmill a couple times per week or cycle interval if I want to burn some extra body fat). Strength training =more muscle mass= higher metabolism = more cals burned at rest. So not only are you burning cals while you train, you burn more the rest of your day as well. Sounds like a no-brainer to me! BUT don’t forget about diet- it will stop any composition change from happening dead in its tracks.

JS: Many women are simply looking to get “toned,” and don’t care about being strong. Why might this be an issue and what do you tell women who express this as a major concern?

JF: Again, most women assume that cardio will get them “toned”- much like not eating will. Although both may result in a minimal loss (followed by a plateau) on the scales, the body will begin to eat its own muscle to live. Most women will not be pleased when their hair is dull, nails thin and break, and they develop skin issues as a result. I like to spin the “toned” look women want into a “healthy” look. In other words, we have to focus on burning body fat, while ALSO building muscle to be healthy and get results. In addition, lifting weights is important for women from their 20’s and older to ensure that our bones stay strong and healthy!

JS: For the general fitness enthusiast, female or male, do you think basing the majority of their training routine on the principles of Powerlifting and/or strength training would be beneficial? Why or why not?

JF: Absolutely! In our (powerlifting) training, we obviously physically condition the body, but what some fail to realize is, we train to condition the mind as well. One aspect of how a Westside “template” is set up, so to speak, is in a way that we are constantly setting and breaking PR’s (personal records). We rarely do a 1RM of the “Classic lifts” (i.e. Squat/Bench/ Deadlift) as we would in a meet; rather, we do a rotation of similar lifts, establishing separate PR’s with different bars, bands, weight releasers, and grips. This enables our lifters to consistently build confidence levels as well, allowing us better focus at a meet.

This relates well to the general fitness enthusiast, because from my experience, people are driven by results. This method of training (referred to as The Conjugate System) allows them to see new personal records on a regular basis, motivating them to stick with their training program consistently for a longer period of time.

JS: What, in your opinion, are the biggest misconceptions in regard to strength training today?JF: Well, we already discussed the myth about females, so let’s continue with the rest of my Top 5 Pet Peeves:

Guys who think they are going to get a bigger bench press by coming in every day and, you guessed it, bench pressing. As discussed in the last question, our training utilizes The Conjugate System, rotating major exercises every 1-3 weeks (depending on if we are training maximal strength or speed-strength) to consistently hit PR’s for the psychological aspect. However, we do this for the physical benefit, as well. You will not get stronger by doing the same exercises over. And over. And over. It’s the law of accommodation- you must switch it up every 2-3 three weeks or your muscles will adapt to what you are doing and stop responding via hypertrophy!

You can’t work the same muscle every day. PLEASE wait 48-72 hours. Enough said. Oh- and while we’re at it, please don’t rep like a speed demon and heave the weights via momentum and think you are doing anything other than hurting yourself. Thank you.

The “followers.” Learn what YOUR weaknesses are and do supplemental exercises to bring YOUR weaknesses up to par. I see way too many guys out there who think just tagging along with a friend’s routine will get them optimal results.

DIET! It is NOT a myth that you need protein post- work out to achieve the maximum muscle gain. A good rule of thumb is to give yourself ~ 1hour window upon completion to get protein back into your muscles and rebuild over what was broken down. Avoid skipping that post-work out meal; sure, you’ll still burn calories, but you will do more harm than good in the long-run.

JS: What does strength mean to you, and why is being strong so important?

JF: Strength is a combination of willpower and physical talent. You can’t go wrong in life by having both of these in your back pocket!

JS: Jean, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to answer my questions. You’re truly beyond inspirational and a great friend. I know everyone (myself included) has thoroughly benefited from your generosity and knowledge. I’m very excited to see what my readers have to say in response to this article. Thank you so much, Jean!

JF: No problem, Jordan- thanks for the opportunity! It was great getting to work with you while you were in town, and I wish all the best to you in life, health, career, and training. To everyone else reading this, TRAIN HARD! Whether it be your own health, or in competition, take control of your own destiny.

In the words of Louie Simmons, “the real contest is within yourself.”

Vitamin B12 Deficiency linked to Memory Problems

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Matt Posted in Health in the News, Nutrition 3 Comments

[cnn.com] There’s been a lot of buzz about vitamin B12 in recent years, and here’s another reason to pay attention to it:

A new study finds that a deficiency in vitamin B12 is associated with memory and thinking problems, as well as brain shrinkage. The research is published in the journal Neurology.

Researchers did not prove that low vitamin B12 levels cause these cognitive abnormalities, but they did find a strong association with markers of deficiency, said study co-author Dr. Martha Morris of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

The theory is that adequate levels of vitamin B12 is necessary for the brain’s myelin sheath, an insulating layer around nerves. When the sheath gets damaged, impulses between transmitted along nerve cells slow down.

Vitamin B12 is found in meats, fish, shellfish and dairy products, and some cereals are fortified with it. People over 65 in particular may need B12 supplements because older patients’ bodies have a harder time absorbing this vitamin.

Researchers looked at 121 participants in the Chicago Health and Aging Project. They looked at both serum levels of vitamin B12 and markers of vitamin B12 deficiency.

The study found that methylmalonate, a marker of vitamin B12 deficiency, is associated with a reduction of brain volume and so may contribute to cognitive problems. Homocysteine, an amino acid associated with low B12 levels as well as folate, was linked to thinking problems through a different mechanism involving abnormal white matter signals (as seen on certain kinds of MRIs).

There aren’t a lot of data on using these markers clinically for the purposes of testing the health of older patients, said Dr. James Lah, neurologist at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, who was not involved in the study. The study points to them as potentially helpful, but more research needs to be done, he said.

The study did not find an association between the serum B12 levels of participants and the likelihood of brain problems. Morris said that makes sense because while low levels negatively affect the brain, high levels above normal aren’t necessarily better than adequate levels.

“There’s a level we should all have, and if you fall below that, it could cause problems,” she said.

Quantifying that level is up for debate, but the National Institutes of Health offers guidelines for recommended vitamin B12 intake at various ages.

Morris and colleagues did not look at this phenomenon in Alzheimer’s patients, but a small 2010 study in Neurology found that people who tended to eat vitamin B12-rich foods are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those who did not. Vitamin B12 deficiency has not been shown to be directly involved in the pathology of Alzheimer’s in the brain, but it may aggravate the brain in other ways that could lead to Alzheimer’s. “We can’t discount its involvement,” Lah said.

Not So Sweet Sugar Facts

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Matt Posted in General Health, Nutrition 7 Comments

Via WackyOwl.com

Athlete Swimming to Greatness after Paralysis

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Matt Posted in Health in the News, Motivation Leave a comment

(CNN) — Hope was stirring for Mallory Weggemann just 11 weeks after she lost movement below the waist.

Weggemann, who didn’t even try to make a college swim team when she could walk, was at a Minnesota pool with a club coach she’d just met. The teen wanted to know if she could return to the sport she knew as a girl — only now with absolutely no kick.

Her father told two of her old high school swimming friends — only half kidding — that they’d need to save Mallory should she start drowning.

“I didn’t know if she was going to float or what was going to happen,” Chris Weggemann recalled of that day in 2008. “But she took off swimming, and she got to the wall, and she said, ‘All right, what do I do now?’ ”

What she’s done in the three years since is smash world para-swimming records, collect an ESPY Award, swim on an NCAA Division I college team and put herself on course for what she hopes is a historic run at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

She was done with competitive swimming after high school, but the pool called her back after she became a paraplegic.

Heading into this week’s Pan Pacific Para-Swimming Championships in Edmonton, Alberta — where she’s won three golds in the first two days of a five-day event — she held 15 world records in her physical ability class. Of the seven solo events to be held in London in her class, she is world champion in six.

“When I got back into the water, it was a real turning point for me — for my mental state, my physical state, everything,” Mallory Weggemann, 22, of Eagan, Minnesota, said this month. “It brought back the emotion that I have and the passion that I have for the water.”

The transition from an able-bodied girl who had hung up her goggles to a world-beating para-swimmer began with an injection three years ago.

Weggemann began having severe lower back pain in high school following a case of shingles. After several unsuccessful treatments, she was prescribed three epidural injections over a number of months, and the first two brought pain relief. But after the third, in January 2008, numbness in the college freshman’s legs didn’t recede, her family says.

She was transferred from a clinic to a hospital. About three weeks in, doctors told her she needed to learn how to use a wheelchair. Complications from the procedure had paralyzed her from the waist down.

It was an unusual result: Though the risk of paralysis stemming from epidural injections varies by type and location, paralysis from epidurals in the lower back is exceedingly rare, said a physician not involved in her care, Dr. Steven P. Cohen, a pain medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins and director of pain research at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Grieving and slow to accept the paralysis, Weggemann made a list of things she would do — but only when she could walk again: Return to class. Travel. Even try out for a college team.

“I was down in the dumps, kind of confused, and asking ‘why-me’ questions, not knowing what was going to be next,” she said, recalling her return home in a wheelchair after weeks of rehab.

Then one of her sisters, trying to cheer her up in April 2008, took her to the University of Minnesota to watch the U.S. swimming trials for that year’s Beijing Paralympic Games.

Weggemann, who started swimming at age 7, saw athletes leave their wheelchairs and crutches and do their thing in the water. She went down to the pool deck and talked with coaches, including Jim Andersen, a longtime club swim coach who only recently had started guiding disabled athletes.

Suddenly, Weggemann wasn’t thinking about goals for a time that might not come. She wondered what she could do now.

A few days later, she had her first practice with Andersen, launching a partnership that would see Weggemann — viewing swimming as something to pour her energy and grief into — test the limits of her newly constrained body.

“When Mallory gets in the water, she feels normal. And I think it made her grow up,” Andersen, 60, said of her return to the pool. “I can’t imagine how devastating it would be to have happened what happened to her, and what my mental mind-set would have been. But (swimming) was a great thing to enable her to recover.”

Weggemann, 22, starts races from a block, swinging her upper body forward with her arms.

The beginning wasn’t easy.

Not all para-swimmers are unable to kick. Some have dwarfism; some are missing a limb; others have a number of other disabilities but can move their legs. Weggemann’s challenge was not only propelling herself solely with her upper body, but also making turns and starting off a block.

Instead of a flipping and kicking off a wall, she learned to push off with her hands, redirecting herself in a semicircular motion. On the starting block, she can crouch and dive into the water, but does so by grabbing the block and swinging her upper body forward, rather than pushing with her legs.

She found her initial competition at able-bodied club meets. At the first one in May 2008, Weggemann, then 19, looked at her 9-year-old competitors and then shot a glance at her dad.

“She looks over with this look of, ‘If these guys beat me,’ ” Chris Weggemann said. “And they did.”

Undeterred, she saw chasing the able-bodied as a game: See how close she could get, chase them for faster times.

Soon, she was not only keeping up with the competition at disabled meets but also beating able-bodied collegians.

She transferred from her small school near Eagan to Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina in January 2009. The kid who thought she wasn’t good enough for a big program before paralysis was now a full member of a Division I team.

Weggemann didn’t win any races at the conference meet in February. But she beat some able-bodied competitors in preliminary heats and electrified her team, Gardner-Webb coach Mike Simpson said.

Beating able-bodied athletes was just an extra, because she was focused on improving her times, Simpson said. But spectators “were pretty blown away” when she beat some swimmers in her 500-yard freestyle heat.

Ahead of the London games, Weggemann — on a two-year break from college — will train six days a week in the pool.

“She added a lot to the team,” he said. “When you have people swim way faster than their best time, that creates momentum and energy for the rest of the team. … (Her performance) got everyone else really excited.”

After that, para-swimming records fell and ambitions rose.

At a USA Swimming meet in Minnesota in May 2009, she swam 1:26.20 in the 100-meter butterfly, breaking the old top U.S. mark in her class, 1:28.12.

That summer in Edmonton, she broke three long-course world records, including in the 400-meter freestyle. Her 5:12.30 time in that event beat the record, which had stood for nine years, by almost five seconds.

She transferred to the University of Minnesota that fall — not to join the team, but to train again with Andersen. She broke several other world records in following months, but her signature moment came the next summer.

At the long-course para-swimming world championships in August 2010, Weggemann took eight gold medals and one silver, and broke nine world records, in individual races and relay events with her U.S. teammates. Her record time in the 100-meter freestyle was 1:08.45. “There’s a lot of able-bodied swimmers who can’t swim that fast,” Andersen said.

And she swam the 100-meter breaststroke final in 1:35.51 — four seconds faster than a world record that a competitor had set in a preliminary heat.

For her performance in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Weggemann last month won ESPN’s 2011 EPSY Award for best female athlete with a disability.

Back in 2009, she told Swimming World magazine that she hoped to win a gold medal at the 2012 Paralympic Games. Now she wants all seven individual golds — a feat last done at the 2004 Athens Paralympics by American and two-time ESPY winner Erin Popovich.

Weggemann gives much of the credit for her success to her coach, Jim Andersen.

And Weggemann — a public relations student on leave until the 2012 games — wants to set world records in each of those events along the way.

“This falls into being a mental game for me,” said Weggemann, who credits Andersen and her family for her success and ability to carry on. “If I can win one (gold), I don’t want to stop at one. I want two and then three. I want to push my body as hard as I can push it.”

Weggemann has been a role model for able-bodied and disabled alike, said Jim Hanton, administrative vice chair for Minnesota Swimming. She has lobbied high-profile state meets to include heats specifically for disabled athletes, and she’s made herself available to young swimmers, speaking to high school teams and showing kids around the aquatic center, he said.

”I’m a big fan,” Hanton said. “She always has a smile on her face. I think of all the athletes who are grumpy and everything else — she’s happy.”

Weggemann is working herself back into shape following illnesses in late 2010 and early 2011, and will hope to be in top form for the U.S. Paralympic trials in March in South Dakota.

If she’s happy, it’s partly because she found her way back to familiar surroundings so quickly after her paralysis.

“It’s something where I can get out of my chair, and it’s just me and the water, and I can move about freely,” she said. “Even when my competitive days are over, I’ll still need that, because it’s a big part of who I am and what I know.”

By Jason Hanna,CNN

Need a Little E-Motivation?

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Matt Posted in Health in the News Leave a comment

What’s the biggest reason people give up on their workout program? Plain and simple, they get burned out, lose motivation, and stop going. Finding unique ways to keep motivation high is problem Share It Fitness and other exercise companies are looking to address. Providing boring workout plans that are nothing more than grocery lists, do not work. Watching 5-minute exercise videos then going off on your own to recreate what you’ve been told, does not work. Watching the same exercise DVD’s over and over again is a sure-fire way to lead to burn out.

At Share It Fitness we are always looking for other companies who have similar ideals about fitness as we do. I’d like to introduce you to another website that offers a unique and motivating concept on staying and/or getting healthy. The website is Konkura.com. Konkura is the brain-child of Dr. Phil Worthington and aims to tap into that natural instinct of competition in each of us, to promote health and fitness.

Konkura is a free site where you can join sport and fitness challenges, or create your own, to compare your performance with other people around the world and get inspired and motivated to train harder/smarter. The challenges can involve any aspect of sport or exercise that you can measure – from single exercises to whole workouts. For this reason, it’s great for benchmarking how you’re improving your strength, fitness or endurance, both compared to other people and against your own past performances.

As Phil says “We created Konkura to encourage friendly competition and make exercise more fun and motivational. If you’ve got a competitive spirit, we think you’ll get a kick out of taking part in Konkura challenges.”

Phil goes on to say, “You can use the site to find new things to do to mix up your training, or stick to a few specific challenges that are closely related to your sport or fitness goals, and use the competitive element to benchmark your performance with other people to help you keep improving.

If you create your own challenges you have the option to keep them private so that only your friends or teammates can take part. We think that’s a fantastic way to train as a group and motivate one another, particularly if you can’t physically meet up for every training session.”

As many of you know, we here at Share It Fitness believe in our concept of Body Diversity Training. That is, engaging in various types of fitness across all disciplines, and at varying levels, to realize the greatest potential growth. Konkura challenges complement our philosophy by allowing you to break the mold of your standard workout program. What’s more, fostering competition has been shown to make individuals work harder and more intensely than if they were simply doing a laundry list of exercises at the gym.

Check them out at Konkura.com for more information.

The Anatomy of Fat

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Matt Posted in General Health, Health in the News 2 Comments

Great article on CNN today on fat cells and losing weight. There are many misconceptions out there, no thanks to certain misleading fitness magazines articles, but this article does a fine job on setting the record straight. See below.

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(CNN) — Multiple chins, bulging tummies and flabby arms: It’s easy to see where fat accumulates on the body.

When a person starts losing weight, where does the fat go? And what parts of the body can you expect to see results?

Headlines from fitness magazines promise exercises to blast away belly fat and activities to spot-reduce flab. The scientific evidence, unfortunately, doesn’t back those sexy headlines.

Here are three things to know about weight-loss and body fat.

You can’t change your shape, just your size.

You can’t cherry-pick where you shed fat; weight loss doesn’t work like a point-and-shoot.

MRIs, CT scans and dexa scans, which use X-ray beams to measure body composition, show no evidence for spot reduction.

“Basically, when we lose weight, we lose weight all over in exactly the proportion that’s distributed throughout our body,” said Susan Fried, director of the Boston Obesity and Nutrition Research Center at the Boston University School of Medicine.

This dexa scan of a woman who underwent bariatric surgery shows where she lost her body fat.

A pear-shaped woman who loses weight will remain a pear, just a daintier one, say researchers who specialize in body fat. More women tend to be pear-shaped, with fat around their hips and thighs. Men tend to be apple-shaped, because they have fat that accumulates around their waist.

“People come in with unrealistic expectations from magazines and spot-reducing,” said Gary Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education. “That doesn’t happen. When you start to lose fat, it’s proportionate throughout your body, whether it’s your neck, waist, ankle circumference. You’ll come out smaller but have the same body shape.”

Maggie and Andy Sorrells in 2002, before the couple started a faith-based weight loss program.

That was the case with Maggie Sorrells, 37, who lost nearly 300 pounds through diet and exercise in less than five years.

Her body was pear-shaped even when she weighed about 500 pounds. She reduced her portion sizes and attended weekly faith-based weight loss meetings called Weigh Down. She noticed that her face and hips were getting smaller.

“My hips were like 73 inches,” Sorrells said. They’re now down to 39 inches.

“It’s crazy to think how much they’ve come down.”

See her iReport: Andy & Maggie 550 down

She and her husband, Andy, who live in Nashville, lost more than 500 pounds combined.

Sorrells essentially retained her pear shape, although she’s 300 pounds lighter. “I’m still rounder in the bottom part of my body. I’m still pear-shaped,” she said.

Maggie Sorrells said she essentially retained her pear shape, although she is 300 pounds lighter.

For most people, the problem is their weight, not their body shape, Foster said. Whether you’re a pear or apple may be determined by genetics or hormones.

Not all body fat is created equal.

When Joe Dragon, an insurance company supervisor in Albany, New York, started losing weight from his 425-pound frame, he noticed the biggest difference in his stomach.

“I was never heavy on the bottom; it was more the gut, belly area,” the 34-year-old said. “The differences I noticed, I have a flat stomach. It used to be huge round ball.”

Joe Dragon lost 135 pounds on Weight Watchers and exercise.

Like Dragon, men tend to be apple-shaped and carry more belly fat, known as visceral fat. This is a dangerous type of fat because it surrounds abdominal organs and is metabolically active.

Essentially, it disturbs the regular mechanisms in your body.

The fat cells release biochemicals that lead to inflammation, which could lead to heart attacks, strokes and joint and muscle pain. This accumulates in the liver, said Dr. Robin Blackstone, surgeon and medical director of Scottsdale Healthcare Bariatric Center in Arizona.

“Fat is basically a store of energy,” she said. “When you need energy, you break down the fat. That breaks down into a component called free fatty acid and goes into the liver for energy. When you have a lot of excess fat, it generates so much free fatty acid, the liver can’t handle it, so it stores it.”

That triggers a host of problems including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance and diabetes.

“Belly fat is much more harmful than the so-called big butt,” Foster said.

The fat in the hips causes much alarm because that part of the body is highly visible. Called subcutaneous fat, the masses of this fat may be unsightly, but scientists believe they’re not as dangerous as internal abdominal fat.

For cosmetic or social reasons, women are more likely to seek obesity treatment than men.

“What that says is that men are likely to need obesity treatment more than women, but women, likely due to stigma socially for being overweight, are more likely to present for treatment,” Foster said.

Where does the fat go?

Fat cells expand when people consume more energy than they can burn. During weight loss, the cells shrink.

“The fat is a very specialized cell, and it takes basically the fat we eat and it stores it in form of triglycerides,” said Fried, who researches how fat is deposited. “It’s doing that for the purpose of releasing it when other parts of the body need it.”

Humans carry about 10 billion to 30 billion fat cells. People who are obese can have up to 100 billion.

“If anyone of us overeats long and hard enough, we can increase the number of fat cells in our body,” Fried said. “When we lose weight, we don’t lose the number of fat cells.”

The size of the cells shrinks, but the capacity to expand is always there.

Liposuction can remove fat cells, but this procedure is ideally for people who are not obese.

“The fat cells are actually being removed,” said Tony Youn, a plastic surgeon who performs liposuctions. “It doesn’t mean that fat cells that remain can’t get bigger.”

Despite the extraction of fat cells, the ones remaining can always get bigger or smaller depending on a person’s diet and fitness.

Celebrity Transformations, Jonah Hill & Seth Rogen Edition

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Matt Posted in Celebrities, General Health 1 Comment

Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill was motivated to get healthy for a new role in a film, 21 Jump Street. He started working with a nutritionist and a personal trainer and has lost about 40 pounds. His new looks is a vast improvement and he is looking great! Hopefully this transformation will give him a new outlook and will want to keep up this new healthier lifestyle even after filming.

Seth Rogen

Seth also lost weight for an upcoming film. Once he changed his eating habits Seth claimed that losing the weight wasn’t difficult, the pounds just seemed to wash away. But Seth says he does love his junk food and hasn’t learned to enjoy healthy food. Hopefully he will experience and learn to appreciate some delicious healthy meals soon and keep the weight off! Eating healthy can be just as enjoyable…especially when you know the benefits you will reap.

Salt controversy: New study links high sodium to earlier mortality

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Matt Posted in Health in the News, Nutrition Leave a comment

(Health.com) – People who eat more sodium and less potassium may die sooner of heart or other problems than people who consume the opposite, a large, 15-year-study has found.

The study of more than 12,000 Americans provides more ammunition to health advocates who say that slashing salt intake will save lives. But not everyone is convinced, as some research is contradictory.

In the new study, men consumed an average of 4,323 milligrams of sodium a day, while women took in 2,918 milligrams.

The American Heart Association recommends people limit their sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams a day or less.

The group with the highest sodium-to-potassium ratio had a mortality risk about 50% higher during the study than the group with the lowest, according to the report by Elena V. Kuklina, M.D., and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Emory University, and the Harvard School of Public Health. The research was published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is naturally low in sodium and high in potassium. Good potassium sources include bananas, baked potatoes, and raisins. In contrast, a diet of processed foods tends to be the opposite — it contains more sodium and less potassium, says Kuklina, a nutritional epidemiologist at the CDC.

“We probably should take into account the whole diet and take a more comprehensive look,” she says. “Looking at a single micronutrient, we might just miss the whole picture.”

Because most of the sodium people in the developed world consume comes from processed food, there has been a movement to get the food industry to reduce the amount of salt it adds to products.

In 2010, the Institute of Medicine recommended that the Food and Drug Administration regulate sodium in food. And the National Salt Reduction Initiative is a partnership of organizations — including major food companies — that aims to cut sodium in processed foods by 25% by 2014.

“We now have 28 companies who have committed to reducing the salt levels in at least one of their categories of products,” says Thomas A. Farley, M.D., of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and coauthor of an editorial accompanying Kuklina’s study.

It’s the easiest way to reduce sodium intake, says Graham MacGregor, chairman of World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, in London.

The UK started doing just that in 2006, requiring companies to cut salt content by 25 to 30%. By 2008, according to MacGregor, sodium intake had fallen by 10%.

“It’s a very large study…and it clearly shows what we’d expect it to show, that eating too much sodium is harmful and eating too little potassium is harmful,” he says.

WASH is a global group established in 2005 with the aim of improving people’s health by reducing salt intake.

But the case isn’t quite closed, some say. For example, a report this May in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that while healthy men and women who ate more sodium than average weren’t at higher risk of dying of heart disease or stroke, cardiovascular mortality was 56% higher for people who ate the least sodium. The eight-year study included 3,681 European men and women age 60 or younger who did not have hypertension.

“It’s confusing,” says Michael Alderman, M.D., a professor of medicine and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx, and editor of the American Journal of Hypertension.

While some people with hypertension do need to reduce their sodium intake, Alderman says, reducing the sodium intake of the entire population could be harmful.

And an analysis of the evidence published in the Cochrane Review in July suggested that there isn’t strong evidence that people who cut back on salt will reap heart-health benefits. But it did say that a population-wide reduction might help.

“These findings should not be misinterpreted as showing that salt reduction will not save lives. There was insufficient evidence to make this judgment,” the author wrote. “Giving advice to reduce salt is a weak method of reducing salt intake in the population. Reducing hidden salt in processed foods, including bread, would likely have a bigger impact on blood pressure levels and on cardiovascular disease.”

Farley says concerns about the risks of salt reduction are unfounded.

“There are populations around the world who take in much, much less sodium than we do and they maintain lower blood pressure throughout their lives, so I’m not concerned about that,” he says. “The easiest way for people to think about it is they should be taking in less sodium and more potassium.”

As far as the JAMA study is concerned, Farley says, “I would consider that an outlier.”

Why You Can’t Lose Weight (And What You Can Do About It)

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Matt Posted in Cardio Training, Featured, General Health, Strength Training 9 Comments

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End the fat cycle…

I’ve seen it countless times. Someone does their cardio exercise almost everyday, usually it’s a run, eats right, but still cannot lose their excess body fat. There really isn’t anything more frustrating in all of fitness than doing the things you think you are supposed to be doing, and STILL can’t lose weight and retain that body fat you so desperately want to see disappear.

Motivation Murder

Maybe you’re on the elliptical or other machine which tells you how many calories you’re burning. You use a food journal, do the math, and have calculated you are burning more calories than you are taking in. You SHOULD be losing weight you may think to yourself.

You may start to feel like all your efforts to run, bike, whatever it is you typically do, are in vain. You are simply maintaining and cannot lose weight or make any significant progress. This is a classic thought process, and one of the biggest contributors to burn out. What if we told you your cardio routine may be the reason why you can’t lose weight?Keep reading…

Your Body Is Smarter Than You Think

For many people, running is their form of cardio exercise. They’ll often go on 4, 5, 6+ mile runs and think they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. In reality, your body is a pretty remarkable machine. It can easily adapt to a given stimulus over a period of time. Doing primarily the same runs at the same speed over a period of time is going to slowly decrease the effectiveness of the run. Your body becomes more and more efficient at handling the same run, which leads to the workout becoming less challenging over time. After some time of doing the same basic run, your body will burn less calories for energy than it did when you first began your running regimen.

There is some research out there that suggests long, slow-to-moderate paced cardio workouts may contribute to the LOSS of lean muscle mass over time. As we should all know by now, the loss of muscle mass contributes to a decrease in your metabolic rate. The body with less lean muscle mass is burning fewer calories at rest than the same body with more lean muscle mass. Your goal is to keep your metabolism as high as possible for your body type. Combine this with the fact that your body has adapted to your cardio routine, and you have recipe for non-existent fat loss and a loss of motivation.

You may have heard the myth that you burn more fat calories by doing low-intensity cardio, while high-intensity cardio uses more carbohydrate stores for energy. Per a recent CNN Health article:

“In general, low intensity exercise has its place — it’s less stressful on joints.

The myth is that if you exercise too intensely, you end up burning carbohydrates instead of fat.

It’s the most dangerous type of myth because there’s a kernel of truth in it, Hutchinson said.

The more intensely you exercise, the higher proportion of carbs you burn. You may burn less fat, but the total amount of calories burned is higher and that is the bigger picture.

When your body has burned up all the carbs, it starts burning fat.

“You can ignore zones and pay attention to how many calories you burn, which ultimately determines how much body fat you’re going to lose,” Fitzgerald said.”

Focus on how many calories you are burning during your exercise. I realize this can be hard and confusing at times, so go all out and pull back from your training when your body demands that you do so. You will no doubt be burning more calories, and ultimately, more fat, by training at an elevated pace.

If You Wanna Look Like an Athlete…

So, what does all this mean for you? My mantra is this: if you want to look like an athlete (and here too), you need to train like an athlete. How does one train like an athlete you may be wondering. For one, athletes and people with lean, athletic, healthy builds, don’t simply go on the same run everyday and expect to keep losing weight. Cross-training is the key to success, along with high-intensity interval training.

Don’t stay at one pace the entire time you do your cardio. Work short, intense bursts of energy expenditure into your run, bike ride, etc. Every few minutes, go at 90-100% for 30 seconds. Ease up, and repeat this cycle for as long as you are exercising for. This type of training keeps your body on its toes, and will never allow it to get comfortable with what you are doing, which is key to speed up fast loss.

Cross-training is just another word for training your body using various formats to achieve a higher level of success. You should always aim to incorporate various forms of fitness into your routine. Alternating your weight training program to include periods of heavy weights/low reps, and low weights/high reps, supplementing with pilates classes, cardio-based fitness classes, wind sprints, running stairs…..you get the point.

The principles of cross-training is what helped shape the Body Diversity Training method we founded here at Share It Fitness. We believe combining a variety of strength/cardio based fitness classes with an effective weight training routine is the single best way to achieve that healthy, lean, and toned body everyone should be striving for.

Above all, you need to develop the mental discipline to push yourself. Whether you are going for a run, lifting weights, or taking a bike ride. NEVER get comfortable with what you are doing. If you ever get to the point where going for that run doesn’t seem like work, it’s because it probably isn’t anymore. Always up your intensity when possible, push yourself to lift that heavier weight, and keep trying different forms of exercise. Do this, and that stubborn fat is going to start melting away in no time.

…and look more like this.

Ready to End the Fat Cycle Once and For All? Join Share It Fitness and We’ll Lead the Way.

Come on over to our full site www.ShareItFitness.com and sign up today! We’ve got hundreds of OnDemand group fitness classes and DVD-style workouts ready to be streamed to any smartphone, tablet, computer, or wifi-television. Even better, we’re still giving away free premium memberships for a little while longer, so jump on the bandwagon while it’s still free! Connect with hundreds of other people on our workout plans, contact live health/fitness professionals ready to answer your questions, and see why Share It Fitness is the most interactive and effective fitness experience on the web!

Flexibility: The Most Overlooked Component of Health (and How it Can Increase Muscle Mass)

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Matt Posted in General Health, Strength Training 5 Comments

What does “being fit” mean to you? Does it mean having a low-level of body fat? The ability to run long distances? The ability to run short distances quickly? Having a low BMI? Having huge muscles?

Being fit means different things to different people. However, many experts believe there are three core components that cannot be neglected to achieve a high level of fitness. The first is muscular efficiency. A lean, toned, and well-proportioned frame is important to a healthy metabolism and bodily function. Second would be the cardiovascular piece to this puzzle. Engaging in frequent cardiovascular exercise, that efficiently raises your training heart rate, will provide you with a wealth of benefits. Not only will you have improved lung and circulatory function, but you will realize a reduced risk for a plethora of life-threatening diseases and conditions.

The last part of this equation of health, and one that is frequently ignored, is flexibility. Flexibility training is vital to your overall health and well-being. Engaging in just 10 minutes of stretching most days a week is all that is required to reap the benefits of having a flexible body. Flexibility has several benefits which include:

Increased ability to perform exercises more efficiently, thereby allowing you to train better
Improvement of blood circulation throughout your body
Reduced risk of injury to muscles, tendons, and ligaments
Enhancement of muscle recovery when a stretching routine is performed after a workout
Increased ability to generate muscle mass

Now, all of the benefits listed above are great, however, I’d like to expand a bit on our last point. Skeptical that stretching several times a week can lead to increased muscular gains? Let me explain how.

Muscles in the human body are encased by something called fascia. Fascia is a type of connective tissue that is quite tough and fibrous. Fascia is great in that it helps to protect our muscles and keep them in place, however, it often hinders the ability of the muscle to grow since it is so tightly wound around the muscle.

Eating a strict, protein-rich diet and training like a freak is great, but you will never realize your full potential if you are up against, stiff and tight fascia. Stretching loosens fascia so that a muscle has room to grow. Why put in all the effort of eating clean and working out like a maniac if you aren’t even able to reap the full benefits of that work. A little stretching will make any strength program instantly more effective.

Now, I know many guys who completely ignore their flexibility. They view it as something that is unimportant to achieving their overall goals of gaining lean muscle mass. Clearly, this is something that should not be ignored. What if you could instantly improve the effectiveness of your time spent in the gym by doing one simple thing? Wouldn’t you want to do it? You’re killing yourself, constantly changing your routine to promote growth, and training to failure. Make all of that sacrifice all the more beneficial by introducing flexibility training into your routine. Whether it’s after you’re done weightlifting, or something you do for 10 minutes before bed, stretching is guaranteed to help your muscles grow faster.

When stretching, there are some key points to keep in mind. These points include:

Stretch to point of tension, not pain
Breath naturally during your stretch
Hold each stretch for three 20-30 second intervals
If you experience serious burning or pain, back off
Gradually increase the stretch over each interval, especially when stretching a cold muscle

Give a stretch routine a try, either at the gym or at home, and start reaping all the benefits that this often overlooked component of fitness can bring about.