The Truth About the Balance Between Eating, Rest, and Moving

It is a well known fact that obesity is on the rise and we are not making much progress with battling this epidemic. It is also well known that activity burns calories and helps us to lose or at least maintain our weight. Knowing that an active body is a healthier body, what are the benefits of moving more and how can we achieve our 10,000 daily steps?

The health benefits of regular activity are far reaching. When we consume foods, especially those high in sugar or fat, our bodies secrete an array of compounds designed to help us either synthesize energy to fuel our cells or as building blocks for things like muscle protein. The resources we consume but don’t need for immediate use are then stored as FAT. When we are more active, either while we eat or while we work, the items we consume must be burned for fuel. The bottom line is if you don’t move it, you will gain it and ultimately lose it—the battle of the bulge that is!!

Yes, the endless fight we all seem to have to battle is our metabolism. When we eat, we raise our insulin levels in our blood stream to help us use and store sugar. Activity can help to lower the sugar surge and thus the insulin surge that follows. The trick to outsmarting our fat cells is to lower our insulin levels and only eat for your immediate fuel needs.

In prior centuries, before food was so plentiful and readily available, it made sense for our bodies to be excellent at storing sources of fuel. Our bodies are exquisitely designed to conserve energy. When we go too long between eating or eat too much at once, the delicate balance of metabolism shifts and we store fat! Getting off balance will leave us at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, as well as for heart attacks and strokes.

Exercise and activity are perfectly designed to counter fat cells by helping to burn recently consumed fats and sugars for energy, which releases less insulin into our blood streams and stores less of energy as fat. The simple fact is that the less we move, the slower our metabolism becomes as we adapt to needing less calories. So merely restricting calories tends to have an adverse effect by actually lowering metabolism. The trick to weight maintenance and eventual loss is to move!

Some Facts in The Sitting Vs. Moving Debate

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Fasted Cardio

Over my 15-year fitness career, my axiom has always been that people should not take my cardio classes without eating beforehand. The rationale for my training is that the body needs the energy source of carbs to for an effective workout that will allow one to get their heart rate to a necessary fat burning zone. Not having enough fuel for your body means, that you won’t get the most out of your workout.

Several months ago a friend lamented about the lack of weight loss to her trainer, he responded that she run on the treadmill in the morning before eating. It sounded like a way to shock the body short-term, but not a long-term solution. This response goes against my intuitive logic so I’ve decided to research this practice known as “fasted cardio.”

This fat burning routine historically has been the secret of body builders looking to maximize leanness. The science or definition of fasted cardio is that performing cardio exercises on an empty stomach forces the body to break down stored fats in order to fuel the work out. In this situation, your insulin level is low and will not interfere with lipolysis (fat burning process), thus allowing you to access and burn more stored body fat for fuel.

When we eat food, it gets broken down into various molecules that our cells can use, and these molecules are released into the blood. Insulin is released as well, and its job is to shuttle these molecules into cells. Depending on how much food you eat in a meal, your insulin levels can remain elevated for several hours (anywhere from 3 – 6+).

When the body is digesting and absorbing what we’ve eaten, it is in a “fed” or “postprandial” state (prandial means “having to do with a meal”), raising insulin levels. Once it has finished processing and absorbing the nutrients, insulin levels drop to a “minimum” low (or “baseline” level), and the body enters a “fasted” or “post-absorptive” state. Every day our body moves between “fed” and “fasted” (or “postprandial” and “post absorptive”) states.

Higher insulin levels means the body will use less fat for energy (both body fat and dietary fat). Consequently, when we eat food the body basically shuts down its fat-burning mechanisms and lives off the energy provided by the meal, and it also stores a portion of the excess energy as body fat for later use. As your body processes and absorbs the food, insulin levels decline, which tells the body to start going to fat for energy as the “fuel” from the meal is running out. Finally, when the absorption is complete, your body is fully running off its own fat stores for energy, which means fasted cardio if we are exercising in this state.

Does Fasted Cardio Work?

A recent study from the UK published in the “British Journal of Nutrition” did find that when subjects were fasted during morning cardio they burned 20 percent more fat than when they had a meal beforehand. However this loss was during exercise not during the critical post exercise stage when metabolism gains are most important.

Overall most studies bear out that there is no significant fat loss or weight loss from the fasted cardio practice. In a controlled study for the Journal of the International Society of Sports Medicine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25429252), twenty young females, all healthy and with recent aerobic training experience (but not resistance training) were divided into two groups. All participants were prescribed the same calorie-restricted diet along with the same steady-state cardio routine. The only variable was that one group (FED) would be given a shake before performing cardio, while the other (FASTED) would wait to consume the shake post-workout. The study showed that everyone lost fat primarily because of supervised dietary restriction and mandatory exercise. Another study confirmed that although fasted runs may help adapt the body to more efficiently burn fat as fuel, they didn’t help athletes lose weight or improve their aerobic conditioning or endurance.

Then there is the study that suggests (more…)

• I just don’t have time to exercise with my new baby.
• I’m in college and don’t have time to exercise.
• I’ve got all these kids I have to carpool—I don’t have time to exercise.
• My time-management skills suck and I never find the time to get to the gym.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Not having time to exercise is the number one excuse people give for not working out.

However, there’s nothing better than exercise to improve your health, mood, stress level, brain fitness, memory, learning skills, attention and concentration, weight management, sleep, energy, productivity, self-esteem, relationships, and even your sex life. Want some motivation? When inactive people increase physical activity just 15 minutes a day, they reduce the risk of premature death by 14% and increase life expectancy by three years. Fifteen minute bursts of exercise every day for three years of life is not a bad trade off!

Optimizing your life to be balanced and healthy requires that you make time for exercise and physical activity. Motivation often starts for an external reason and quickly moves into something deeply internal — “I want to fit into that dress for our daughter’s wedding” turns into “I want to see my grandchildren someday.” So, another way to have more time is to reconsider how you think about your time, and what you consider to be exercise.

Find Time For Exercise While in College

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