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Samantha Hall

Caffeine Tolerance and Sensitivity

There is nothing like the first sip of coffee or caffeinated beverage in the morning. The caffeine “high” of improved mood, increased focus, sense of more energy, and overall heightened performance is what makes it the world’s most popular drug. For athletes, it is well documented that acute bouts of caffeine consumption have performance enhancing benefits like improved power, aerobic endurance, max strength, and muscular endurance (We have a podcast all about caffeine. Check it out here!)

All these benefits make it very easy to start habitually and chronically consuming caffeine. Chronic caffeine use seems par for the course these days. I mean, who doesn’t start their day with caffeine? Yet, recent research suggests chronic caffeine may cause caffeine tolerance.

 

Caffeine and Your Brain

Caffeine’s effects on the body are primarily due to its role as an adenosine receptor antagonist. Caffeine stops adenosine from being able to bind to adenosine receptors. Adenosine is a hormone responsible for slowing our metabolic processes and making us sleepy. In blocking adenosine binding, caffeine not only blunts these effects, it also triggers the pituitary gland to release adrenaline producing the rush of “energy”.

Overtime, it appears our bodies may adapt to caffeine by creating more adenosine receptors. Studies have shown intakes of 10 mg/kg/bodyweight per day to cause an increase in the number of adenosine binding sites in the brain cortex of rats after just two weeks (1). This would mean over time our same serving of caffeine would be less effective as there are more opportunities for adenosine to bind to receptor sites making us sleepy, even in the presence of caffeine.

 

Caffeine and Performance

If our brain is adapting to our caffeine intake, we would assume the effects we receive from caffeine would decrease overtime. Multiple studies have examined this hypothesis with mixed results. A 2018 by Pickering and Kiely review summarized the finding from four different studies on the effects habitual caffeine use has on caffeine’s performance enhancing benefits. From this research, they conclude habitual caffeine use of 3-6 mg/kg/bodyweight daily may indeed lead to reduced ergogenic effects over time. They also determined this reduced ergogenesis can be offset by increasing one’s caffeine intake on the day of an event.

 

Strategies for Decreasing Caffeine Tolerance

So, what does this mean for us? While there are no clear answers or specific strategies guaranteed to attenuate caffeine tolerance, there are some tentative strategies proposed by researchers, as well as strategies I have found to work well in practice. Here are five ways to manipulate your caffeine intake to avoid creating a tolerance.

Keep Daily Intake Low to Moderate: Rather than going ham day in and day out (it me), keep your daily intake relatively low (2-3 g/kg/bw). Not only will this minimize adaptations and negative effects, it also allows for increases in intake on the days when we really need it.

Increase Intake Before an Event: As previously mentioned, research has shown increases in caffeine prior to an event may boost the ergogenic effect you receive. However, increased caffeine intake can have negative effects like gastrointestinal distress, increased anxiety, or headache. Be sure to experiment with this prior to an event.

Have Deload Days: On lighter training days or off days, limit or abstain from caffeine. While the research is mixed, I have found doing one or two “deload” days a week to increase my own caffeine sensitivity afterwards.

Caffeine Timing: Timing your intake around your workouts can help you capitalize on any benefit you may be getting from caffeine. Research suggests a bolus of caffeine one hour prior to a workout or event can improve performance.

Pre- and Intra-Dosing: If you want to get really specific, you can even split your consumption of caffeine into a dose prior to training or an event and a smaller dosing during the event (1). This may improve performance by staving off fatigue during longer or more intense work.

 

Like most things in life, caffeine is great… but in moderation. Trust me, it hurts me just as much to type this as it may hurt to read. The addictive buzz of caffeine makes it very easy to habitually and chronically consume caffeine. Yet, we may want to be more mindful of our intake if we want to enjoy the ergogenic and lifestyle benefits of caffeine when we really need it. For more on the history of caffeine and how it has us all under its thumb, we recommend checking out the book Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World by Michael Pollan (2019).

 

References:

Pickering, C., & Kiely, J. (2018). What should we do about habitual caffeine use in

athletes?. Sports Medicine, 49(6), 833-842.

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Gillian SanFilippo

Nighttime Casein Supplementation

It is well established that total daily protein intake is critical for maximizing the work we do in the gym and optimizing the training adaptations we’re looking for. Once paired with resistance training, ensuring that our total protein intake is sufficient is easily the most impactful variable in seeing positive body composition changes.

As we nail down our baseline habits (sleep, nutrition, training, stress) and get more specific, it’s understandable that we can come across some confusion regarding how we can best approach our day to day. Every client and athlete will operate under different circumstances and lifestyles, so molding each nutrition- or training-related variable to suit the individual’s life, while also being used effectively, is the main goal.

Protein timing, for example, is one of these variables that is definitely beneficial, but also leaves room for approaches that may simply be insignificant for the athlete if we look at the big picture. Nighttime casein supplementation in particular is a popular approach that we get asked about often regarding protein timing and maximizing muscle protein synthesis.

 

Whey vs. Casein

While whey and casein protein powders are, well… both protein powders, they are definitely not the same thing. They have a couple of main differences that will be important to point out which will also provide us with some background about why casein is commonly used at night/before bed.

Both whey and casein are the two types of proteins found in cow’s milk, making up about 20% and 80% of milk protein, respectively. The primary difference between these two proteins is how fast our bodies are able to digest and absorb them; they both digest at different rates.

To sum up this process, once we digest protein they are broken down into amino acids, which then circulate in the blood stream until they are absorbed. When we ingest whey protein, these amino acids stay elevated in the bloodstream for about 90 minutes. In contrast, casein protein can take up to 4-5 hours to absorb, making it take much longer to digest compared to whey.

This is a great example of why whey protein is so efficient post-workout and highly recommended, but we’re not here to talk about whey. They question remains if nighttime casein supplementation can make substantial differences in markers like body composition and muscle growth.

 

Daytime vs. Nighttime

This study sought to compare daytime (DT) and nighttime (NT) casein supplementation on the muscular adaptations and body composition changes of men following a 10-week resistance training program.

Calorie goals were established using the Mifflin St. Jeor equation (a 1.6x adjustment was made for activity level) in conjunction with protein targets being set at 1.8 grams/kg/bodyweight inclusive of the provided casein supplement.

Each serving of casein consisted of 35 grams of protein and less than 0.5 gram each of fat and carbohydrates. In addition to this study being diet- and exercise-controlled this was also a double blind and placebo-controlled design, so the placebo being used was a serving of maltodextrin containing 35 grams of carbohydrates and less than 0.5 gram each of fat and protein.

As you can probably guess, the nighttime group was supplemented with their casein supplement immediately before going to bed; the 35g of maltodextrin was supplemented with earlier in the day. The daytime group, in contrast, supplemented with casein earlier in the day and took the 35g of maltodextrin at night before going to bed.

 

Which Timing Wins?

After completing 10 weeks of resistance training, results found that subjects in both daytime and nighttime supplemental protocols experienced similar changes in body composition. Regardless of the time of day their casein was consumed, subjects were able to similarly increase muscle mass and strength while decreasing body fat percentage over the study period.

Training volume didn’t differ between the groups either, so given an effective training stimulus and an adequate total protein intake we can expect to see positive body composition changes and improvements in muscle size and strength.

There’s no special or superior timing for protein feedings, so being intentional with our diets regarding physique enhancement should be considered on a larger scale – looking at total protein intake, staying in a positive net muscle protein balance, and supplementing accordingly where the individual needs it. It does no harm, of course, but it’s won’t provide an added benefit if your protein intake is already where it should be to meet your specific goals.

While specific times aren’t critical when looking at the big picture, appropriately spacing out your meals is still an important habit to maintain. We generally recommend having 3-5 protein feedings per day. Of course, the amount of meals will differ based on your schedule and preference, but having a few meals spread out will be most ideal for maximizing muscle protein synthesis.

 

References:

Joy, J.M., Vogel, R.M., Broughton, K.S., et al. Daytime and nighttime casein supplements similarly increase muscle size and strength in response to resistance training earlier in the day: a preliminary investigation. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2018 15:24.

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Are You Bloated or Are You Full?

The line between being bloated or being full can certainly be a fine one, and something that many clients struggle to distinguish. As a coach, if a client is dealing with chronic bloating and stomach distention that is absolutely something that needs to be addressed. But often times the bloating that a client thinks their dealing with is a normal, healthy response to eating enough food and they are simply full.

Why might someone struggle to distinguish between the two? There’s a handful of reasons.

You’re coming off of a diet

If you’ve just finished a diet phase, you’re used to eating less total calories and food volume because of the deficit. While our bodies are incredibly adaptive, it still takes time to adjust to the feeling of fullness after a diet. During this recovery period, clients will often times think they’re bloated when in reality they are actually just getting used to feeling the sense of fullness again. This is especially true the leaner you’ve gotten, like in a competition prep for example. And as with all dieting adaptations, like the longer the diet has been + the leaner you’ve gotten, the longer it’ll take to recover.

 

You’re recovering from years of restricting your food intake

If you’re recovering from chronic dieting, yo-yo dieting or any type of disordered eating, the feeling of fullness can in and of itself be a trigger. A sense of emptiness is actually something people learn to crave when they’re in these situations. Working with clients to understand that fullness does not mean you’re a failure, or that you overate or anything of the like is a critical step to normalizing this feeling. One part of this is physically adapting to eating more and feeding yourself more frequently; the other part of this is mentally accepting this as something normal versus something negative. If you’re struggling with this component, don’t feel like you have to hide it and certainly reach out for professional help if it has become consuming.

 

You think everyone (besides you) has a flat stomach 24/7

Social media can have you convinced that everyone besides you has a flat stomach 24/7, they never deal with bloating and they only have killer angles. Wrong. Logically speaking, most people are going to pick the photo or video to post where they look the best. And why wouldn’t they? No one chooses a bad photo on purpose (unless you’re trying to prove a specific point) so you can’t expect to look at a snapshot in time and think that represents how someone looks at all times of the day. Every single person, including you, has days where they feel great and other days where they feel like a bag of potatoes. Don’t let the internet convince you otherwise.

 

You might actually need to work on your digestion 

While the focus of this article has been about learning to distinguish the difference between bloating and fullness, this distinction is not meant to downplay the clients who actually need to work on their digestion. There are many clients who do in fact have digestion and bloating issues that need to be addressed. Digestion and the world of gut health is still a bit murky but the best place to start is to simply start journaling and tracking your responses to specific foods.

Do you bloat every time you eat a certain food?

Do you not have regular bowel movements because you’re dehydrated?

Do you notice distention from work or home stress?

How does your meal timing effect your digestion?

If you’re a woman, where are you in your menstrual cycle?

 

These are just a handful of questions to ask yourself and relay to your coach. Sometimes, you’re just having a day where you’re bloated. Other times there are very specific things that trigger distention and poor digestion. The only way to recognize those differences is to take note of your individual biofeedback and adjust from there!

 

While this isn’t something everyone experiences, distinguishing between being bloated versus being full is a real struggle for many clients. Recognize where that struggle is stemming from whether it’s a dieting adaptation, a negative mindset around the feeling of being full or if you are truly having bloating issues. Once you understand the root cause, then you can start in the appropriate direction to fix it.

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Gillian SanFilippo

Menu Labeling, Exercise Equivalents, and Our Eating.

With rising rates of weight-related health conditions, it’s becoming increasingly important to shift our focus towards a preventative approach regarding lifestyle interventions and combatting obesity. Treatment has its place of course, but if we can prevent these issues from emerging in the first place, that’s an ideal situation for us to be in.

This is why knowledge and nutrition education, especially, holds so much value no matter the individual and their starting point. Learning the ins and outs of how to diet properly, ways to approach our nutrition and implement it into our lives and developing tools in order sustain that progress is major key.

 

Some Background

One of the more recent changes made with the goal of promoting healthier behaviors and making nutrition education more widely available is something called point-of-purchase menu labeling. Essentially, this is where restaurants or food chains list calorie counts on their menu items, in efforts to educate consumers on the contents of their meal choices.


While polls have shown that most consumers would like nutrition information to be available to them while eating out, there are still quite a few mixed feelings and results around calorie counts on menus and the impact they really make on our food choices.

 

Exercise Equivalents

In addition to calorie counts, exercise equivalents are also a novel idea to possibly include within point-of-purchase labeling. Exercise equivalents can be described as the amount of time doing a specific exercise or activity in order to burn off the calories in certain foods.

(I.e. walking to the fridge burns approximately 2 calories… don’t take my word for it though).

 

I’ll say right now that I personally don’t agree with the use of exercise equivalents in most contexts, really. It’s great information to know, but I don’t think they provide the right message in most instances. They often encourage the idea of looking at food from a lens of what you need to do to “work it off.” As we know, context matters! When it comes to educating clients and implementing positive habits, though, I think education around nutrition and physical activity can be spread in much better ways.

Not only that, but there are much more positive habits that we can establish when it comes to eating out, eating off plan, and moving forward from those meals while continuing our progress.

Nonetheless, this present study sought out to determine if using exercise equivalents in conjunction with caloric information on menus was able to make an impact on the subsequent meal choices of 62 overweight and obese females.

 

Informed Eating

This study design held two meal sessions (Lunch 1 and Lunch 2) in a standard hamburger and fries fast food chain. The sessions were 1 week apart from each other – the first lunch served as a control and the second served as the experimental intervention. Once at Lunch 2, each participant received restaurant menus with the only difference being the information provided on them (which were randomly assigned): no information on calories or exercise equivalents, calories only, or calories and exercise equivalents. Exercise equivalents and calorie contents were listed in column headers as “minutes to burn off X food from walking”, “calorie content.”

Three factor eating questionnaires were also implemented in the study design in order to determine restraint levels of the women. This can also be an influential marker in eating behavior worth taking note of. (Read more on that here!)

 

Application

While this study did not reach statistical significance, results found that both the calories only and calorie + exercise equivalent participants wound up ordering 16% and 14% fewer calories from Lunch 1 to Lunch 2, respectively. The no information group saw a difference of only 2% fewer calories.

Regardless if the participants were restrained or unrestrained eaters, both types saw a meaningful decrease in calories ordered by Lunch 2. The largest decrease in calories was seen in restrained eaters in the calories-only group (a decrease of 24.7%).

While these results are not labeled as significant findings, these differences in eating behavior (in only a week’s time) are meaningful! Oftentimes when clients start tracking their food and seeing those numbers out in front of them, it gives them a whole new perspective on the foods they’re eating and allows us to make informed choices on how we want to structure our day.

Being aware of what and how much we’re consuming, learning about portion sizes, and being cognizant of how these meals will fit into our day as a whole are all important steps in finding a better balance between eating the foods we enjoy while keeping overarching lifestyle goals in mind. No food is inherently “good” or “bad” here either; just because one item may be higher calorie than another doesn’t make it less healthy than another. This is all context dependent on the client’s goals, their body composition, dieting history, current intake, and so much more. 

 

References:

Platkin, C., Ming-Chin, Y., Hirsch, K., et al. The effect of menu labeling with calories and exercise equivalents on food selection and consumption. BMC Obesity. 2014, 1:21.

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Gillian SanFilippo

Body Recomposition and Trained Individuals

Body recomposition refers to the process of building muscle mass and dropping body fat simultaneously. This is obviously ideal for most, if not all, clients that we work with. Changing that ratio of lean body mass to body fat is not only beneficial for long term health and fitness levels, but achieving body recomposition over time is especially important for physique competitors as well. The overall goal for physique athletes is to drop body fat and maintain/build muscle mass in order to present their best physique on stage aesthetically.

Body recomposition is relatively easier to achieve for the untrained, novice trainees, or overweight/obese populations. With that said, body recomposition is also commonly thought to be possible exclusively for these populations, and not the more experienced and/or advanced trainees.

There is a significant amount of evidence suggesting otherwise, showing that this process is well within reach for resistance-trained individuals as well.

 

Main Determinants

There are two primary drivers for these adaptations to occur: progressive resistance training (…duh) combined with evidence-based nutritional strategies. This isn’t surprising as a combination of a solid training program and effective nutritional interventions are shown to be highly beneficial, no matter the client’s level of experience.

Now to take a step back really quick – when first starting out (the novice/untrained), very little habit change goes a long way. Literally any form of consistency within the diet or activity can show positive changes for those who had no structure or guidance prior.

Now taking this point to resistance-trained and experienced individuals, these variables still continue to be important. Nothing has changed there – we still need proper dietary strategies and progressive resistance-training/solid training principles in order to set ourselves up best for desirable physique changes.

 

Physique Athletes In-Season

Most of the current literature on physique athletes is comprised of case studies done during contest preparation (i.e. aggressive dietary restriction, low body fat, high expenditure, negative hormonal/metabolic adaptations, and poor sleep). This, in turn, makes body recomposition hard to achieve due to this state and the demands it places on the athletes.

 

Nutritional Strategies and Training

As we know, diet and training are both important factors; they’re even more impactful once combined with one another. Various studies show us that resistance training coupled with evidence-based nutritional strategies, such as manipulating protein intake (by raising it or hitting a minimum amount), looking at energy balance, and nutrient timing produce favorable changes to body composition, performance, and overall recovery.

The idea that more advanced trainees are no longer able to achieve body recomposition can possibly stem from simply forgetting what other variables are important for us to consider. What other things do we have to keep an eye on to ensure we’re making progress and optimizing everything that we’re already doing? What can hinder that progress?

Diet and training are just the beginning. Shocker.

 

In The Details

Looking at resistance-trained individuals is good in a sense that they already have those bigger habits established. They have no issue training, challenging themselves with the weights, and keeping an eye on their diet and nutritional approaches. With that said, however, this is also where smaller things will add up.

Non-training and diet-related variables also influence our ability and rate of achieving body recomposition over time. These smaller details in one’s day/week can easily be overlooked because they seem so small in comparison to other, larger factors we often spend so much time looking after. This makes them even more likely to add up over time – for the good or bad. Let’s look at a few of them:

Sleep, Stress, and Metabolism

This is not just the number of hours per night, either. Are you getting restful, quality sleep? Sleep restriction has been shown to influence food cravings and hunger through increasing the likelihood of overeating. In addition to this, under equated caloric deficits, sleep-deprived individuals lost more FFM than their rested counterparts.

In addition to this, less sleep can then bleed into other areas in our lives like stress and negative hormonal adaptations. Increased cortisol levels, glucose, and insulin are all things that make achieving body recomposition, or gaining muscle mass and losing body fat, much harder or not likely to occur at all. The authors describe this as an, “’anti’ body recomposition environment,” essentially.

 

Application

Setting a foundation from the start and looking at the details of our current lifestyles is essential. This makes it so that when novice/untrained people become beginner trainees, then intermediate, and even more advanced, they already have the tools and habits needed to optimize every aspect of what they’re doing.

Based on the literature, it’s clear that body recomposition is very possible for those who are resistance trained. Maintaining a progressive training program, tracking progress in a variety of ways, consuming a high protein diet, and focusing on other lifestyle factors such as sleep will all positively influence your body composition and your ability to continue making those changes.

 

References:

Barakat, C., Escalante, G., Pearson, J., Campbell, B., De Souza, E. Body recomposition: can trained individuals build muscle and lose fat at the same time? Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2020 DOI: 10.1519

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Personal Responsibility is Cool

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Victor Frankl wrote this in Man’s Search for Meaning, his harrowing account of life in the Nazi concentration camps. Frankl was also a brilliant psychiatrist and founder of logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy that stems from the belief that ‘striving to find meaning in life is the primary and most powerful driving force in humans.’ His teachings, among other great psychologists of his time, intrigued me to dive more into the realm of understanding and applying personal responsibility. 

First, let’s define personal responsibility.

 

Per the internet: Personal responsibility is the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions.

This seems fairly straight forward right? So, why don’t we all employ personal responsibility in all areas of our lives?

Like everything worth giving a shit about, personal responsibility is hard. It’s much easier to blame circumstances, or your genetics, or your relationships, or your job or that one thing that happened in 5thgrade… the list could go on forever. No one is immune to feeling sorry for themselves and we all play the victim card sometimes. But think about how disempowering is it to cast the blame on outside circumstances we can’t control when instead we could put our focus on what actions we do take or don’t take in our lives.

Personal responsibility effects every single facet of our lives. For the purposes of this article and within the context of coaching, I’ll cover a few instances we see this play out with clients diet, training and lifestyle.

One of the most common scenarios is someone who has a history of yo-yo dieting and has ‘tried everything’ without success. They will blame the specific diet for their lack of success, not their lack of foundational knowledge or poor habits. Surely, there are a handful of downright terrible diets. But outside of the extreme plans and methods, most people’s problems lie within the fact that they don’t have any foundational food education and continue to engage in poor habits that set them up for failure.

 

No meal plan or quick fix detox will fix that. Until you take responsibility for learning the basics, no diet will work and you will always be spinning your wheels.

 

The same could be said for getting consistent with training. It’s easy to blame being tired or being stressed with work. But is that really it? Or are you f**king around at night and have a terrible sleep schedule, which influences how you manage your work day, which creates unnecessary stress? Creating the right routine that works for your life and lifestyle is always the first step.

 

Dial in your nighttime routine. Set a literal bedtime if you find yourself staying up late and then rushing in the morning. Put away your phone and create the right environment to get quality sleep.

Decide when you’re going to train. Are you getting it done before or after work, and then adjust your schedule appropriately. It doesn’t matter when you train, but you need to be realistic about what you will actually get done.

Organize your work day so you get more done in less amount of time. If you’re consistently sleeping, training and eating right, you’ll also be much more focused and productive.

 

These are just a few, easy examples of how taking personal responsibility for your actions can completely reshape your life, your fitness and how you feel. It’s incredibly easy to slip into bad habits, but being healthy is not as time consuming as you might think The best lesson we can teach our clients is to be personally responsible for their actions to help them take back control of their health and create long lasting change, which is why it’s something we take seriously.

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Gillian SanFilippo

Overfeeding and Human Variability (Pt. 2)

Overfeeding studies can be categorized as studies that seek to investigate the consequences of chronic overfeeding, or consistently overeating calories, in humans and their biology. As we know from part 1, overfeeding studies may seem pretty straightforward, but they can actually teach us a lot about the unpredictability of humans and our bodies.

 

Alongside the obvious body composition and weight changes that come from overfeeding, changes in metabolic rate, total energy expenditure, and even disparities in eating behavior are also impacted and worth discussion. Consequently, there’s always something to take away in how we apply these points to ourselves and our clients.

 

More Fuel = More Burned?

As it relates to metabolic rate, metabolized fuel, and total energy expenditure, overfeeding spurs up some more questions.

Resting metabolic rate (RMR), for one, is shown to represent the largest portion of total daily energy expenditure in both sedentary and recreationally active people. Once overfeeding is thrown into the equation, however, no stark or reliable increases in RMR are observed when data is adjusted for body weight and fat free mass. These results are also independent of the carb or fat content within the overfed calories.

 

Thermic Effect of Food

Thermic effect of food (TEF), or diet-induced thermogenesis, is essentially the amount of energy we burn upon consuming foods. When drastically overeating calories, much of the present data shows that any increase in TEF is quite small and non-significant. It also remains unclear if this small increase is due to the rise in RMR. In addition to this, once exercise was added to an overfeeding protocol lasting 10 days, RMR was shown to have increased significantly.

Now considering individual macronutrients, protein intake may produce more variable results in RMR values. One study design had prescribed caloric surpluses, with protein contents ranging between 5%, 15%, and 25%. A significant increase in RMR was observed the following day in normal and high protein diets. Protein can also have an impact on TEF; protein is much more satiating as it takes longer for us to digest. In that, higher protein intakes are often associated with higher TEF responses.

 

Total Daily Energy Expenditure

As far as total energy expenditure is concerned, there are quite a few inconsistent results here as well. Some studies show increases in total EE, while others do not. Most of the evidence, however, suggests that total EE is increased although depending on the testing methods, it may not always be detected. When comparing carbohydrate and fat overfeeding, carb overfeeding was shown to increase total EE in subjects whereas fat overfeeding did not produce any changes.

 

Eating Behaviors Post-Overfeeding

Feelings and behaviors around and towards food can differ greatly person to person. This is dependent on a lot of factors like dieting history, experience with diets (restrictive backgrounds), body composition, current goals/weight status, surrounding environment (food/family), and so on.

Subjective feelings towards food or specific kinds of food (i.e. fast foods, carbohydrates, snacks/sweets, etc.) can change significantly after acute periods of overfeeding. This is influenced even more by the individual experiences and eating behaviors we all partake in as previously mentioned.

Hunger and the desire for foods, for example, are shown to change significantly after just 1 day of overfeeding or underfeeding. Upon using the three-factor eating questionnaire, which assesses disinhibition, restraint, and hunger, a greater dietary disinhibition was linked to adults who were more prone to obesity, compared to adults who were more resistant. This greater level of disinhibition, in turn, lead to a greater weight gain over time (shown in studies where follow-up periods were employed).

Another noteworthy mechanism in rebalancing intakes and recovering from bouts of overfeeding is called cognitive restraint. This can be defined as a sort of appetite control mechanism that we rely on to regulate our energy balance. Using cognitive restraint, however, seems to be quite inadequate once we take into account individual variability. Some subjects were observed to be “compensators,” or those who compensated with a significant drop in energy intake, while others were considered “noncompensators,” who failed to reduce their intakes to make up for the food surplus prior.

 

Person-dependent Outcomes

Almost all subjects who undertook overfeeding protocols were able to return, or closely return, back to their starting baseline weight over a timespan of weeks to months. Though, there is a significant amount of variability in response to overfeeding and the time period following it that gives us an understanding of just how many responses can be seen.

Subjects who are obese and non-obese prone, for one, proved to be a big factor influencing individual responses to overfeeding and subsequent appetite control mechanisms. This can easily be tied to the fact that obesity is a multifactorial issue – one unique to the individual, their environment, family, dieting history, health status, and much more. In addition to this, the differences in cognitive restraint, or any appetite control mechanism, show us that some people may need to employ more intentional cognitive restraint than others, rather than relying on “intuitive” responses.

 

These findings emphasize for us just how much variability exists with the human body, how we gain and lose weight, and how we control and regulate our own eating behaviors in response to particular scenarios. It’s not enough to simply prescribe a plan and predict every next step for the client because it’s nearly impossible to know how every individual will respond.

Taking into account the client’s dieting history, their mindset and attitudes towards dieting and food, and their individual circumstances are solid starting positions for understanding the steps you’ll need to take and the methods that will benefit the client most.

 

References:

Bray, G.A., Bouchard, C. The biology of human overfeeding: a systematic review. Obesity Reviews. 2020; 1-78.



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How Long Should You Expect Your Contest Prep To Be?

The million dollar question every competitor asks is “How long will be my prep be this season?”

 

The short answer: However long it takes for your body to get stage lean.

The nuanced answer: It will depend on a multitude of factors including your offseason, dieting history and starting body composition to name a few.

 

How many times have you seen or heard of the standard ‘12 week competition prep’ from coaches within the industry? This used to be the gold standard but realistically, 12 weeks just doesn’t cut it for most clients. While I don’t love giving absolutes, I’d say generally speaking most of our clients prep for 16-24 weeks before their first show of the season. Often, this timeline is longer.

 

So, what might influence a clients prep length? Let’s dive into some of the factors.

 

Dieting History

The most important factor when considering a competition prep is a clients dieting history. Have they engaged in yo-yo dieting for years and are now deciding to prep? Have they gone through multiple, rigorous contest preps? Have they been overweight, are now weight stable and looking to get stage lean? Have they engaged in little dieting over their life? These questions completely change the length of a contest prep.

If someone has extensive dieting history, in any capacity, that client will need to prepare for a longer prep and a longer recovery after that prep. Not taking adequate time in between preps is hard on everyones body, but especially those with longer dieting histories. Think of each diet as having a compounding effect on your metabolism.

 

Starting Body Composition

Where a client is starting their prep will inevitably influence the length of their prep. There are some clients who naturally sit at a lower body fat. These clients understandably have shorter preps. But notice how I said *naturally* sit at a lower body fat not ‘force themselves to sit…’ because that has very different effects.

 

Staying too lean for your own personal body in the offseason will take a toll in a few ways:

  • Your prep will be much harder because you’re already fighting your body from the start.
  • Your offseason will be less productive because you won’t have been able to build and recover optimally.
  • Your hormonal status will be off from the start (more on this below).

 

In short, 12 week preps and ‘staying X pounds above stage weight’ is generally poor advice.

 

Muscle Mass

While this is related to body composition, I wanted to highlight a distinction here. Having more muscle mass will generally lead to a better prep. Lean body mass is not only more metabolically active, but it’s also what gives competitors the winning shape you see on stage. Yes, low body fat is part of it but this is bodybuildingmeaning if you want to have the ideal physique for you division, you’ll likely need more muscle.

Spoiler alert: This is why offseasons are so important.

 

Lifestyle Factors

Another aspect to consider for prep length is your lifestyle. Do you have a high stress job? Are you back in school? Do you have a family? There are a whole host of lifestyle factors that need to be considered. Just because you have a lot on your plate does not mean you can’t prep, it simply means we need to be smart about programmed deloads, diet break weeks and generally taking a slower approach.

 

Hormonal Status

Having healthy hormones effects both female and male clients, but female clients typically get hardest from dieting adaptations. This is especially true if someone’s dieting history is longer and/or they’ve done multiple preps. Getting stage lean is very hard hormonally and can skew factors high or low, creating issues with clients cycles, mood, fat loss and muscle gain.

 

The best way to stabilize hormones is to simply take time away from a diet. I probably sound like a broken record about taking a long offseason but it’s that important! After you’ve taken adequate time off, worked up calories to an appropriate level and gotten to a comfortable body fat for your personal body, you’ve likely stabilized your hormones. In the advent you still feel off and/or if you’re a female with an irregular cycle, blood work is necessary to see what is imbalanced. Without blood work, you’re simply guessing.

 

When you consider all these factors, the harsh reality is that your prep will likely be slower or longer then you’d like.

While it can be a tough pill to swallow at first, consider all of the positives of a longer prep: You’ll be able to retain lean body mass more efficiently meaning you’ll be in a better position metabolically and bring a better physique to stage. You’ll be able to maintain optimal hormonal fucntion for longer, versus a crash diet with tons of cardio. You’ll be able to still train hard and maintain a social life. And last, but certainly not least, you’ll have an overall healthier system that will allow you to thrive for years during your competition preps and outside of them, too.

 

Set yourself up for success by committing to a quality offseason. If you need help, we’d love to guide you through this journey! Apply for coaching here and get connected with a coach to discuss your goals.

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Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)

The condition known as the “female athlete triad” has been acknowledged since 1997 and is characterized by a set of three medical conditions: inadequate energy intake (with or without disordered eating), amenorrhea (the absence of menstruation), and decreased bone health.

 

In 2014, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced what we now know as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), which is a more comprehensive, and more inclusive condition as it can be diagnosed in both males and females. RED-S includes a series of impairments such as the above mentioned with female athlete triad (metabolic dysfunction, amenorrhea, and decreased bone health), along with reduced cardiovascular health, decreased protein synthesis, and a weakened immune system.

 

Why does this Happen?

RED-S can occur as a result of many factors such as the desire to enhance performance with inadequate nutrition, poor coaching, weight cycling, and overtraining. While there is limited research on RED-S due to it being a relatively new diagnosis, it is important to be aware of the consequences of underfeeding, overtraining, etc. in sport. Even if an individual does not present with all of the above-mentioned characteristics of RED-S, they could still be experiencing this deficiency, and an appropriate intervention must be implemented.

 

Mending the Issue

The importance of fueling the body correctly, experiencing signs of functioning hormones (having a period), maintaining bone and heart health, optimizing protein synthesis, and maintaining a strong immune system cannot be overstated. As coaches, we often have to have the hard conversation with clients that some of the methods they have been implementing for years (whether it be undereating, overtraining, etc.) must come to an end in order to reestablish health.

 

If you are currently experiencing any of the above-mentioned issues, it is highly likely that it is time to make a shift in your approach. Being that falling victim to inappropriate coaching is a risk factor for developing RED-S or for the deficiency persisting, it is of the utmost importance that you solicit the health of a qualified individual (or interdisciplinary team) in order to correct these adverse effects.

 

Your health is number one, do not let anything you see on social media tell you otherwise. Undereating and overtraining will not lead to you a long or healthy life. Be smart and listen to your body, you know when something isn’t right, and it is your job to be proactive with your health.

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Gillian SanFilippo

What Overfeeding Studies Can Show Us (Pt. 1)

Weight regulation and the obesity epidemic in itself is multifactorial in nature. There is a plethora of different factors at play when we start to consider why and how weight gain occurs, and subsequently persists long term for certain individuals and/or populations.

A widely researched topic of interest that provided us with valuable baseline information about weight regulation is known as human overfeeding studies. Essentially, these studies aim to figure out the ins and outs of weight gain and the adaptations that can happen to us as a result of chronic overfeeding.

 

While this topic seems pretty straight-forward (i.e. overeating for ‘x’ amount of time), there is a lot of data to consider with over 300 studies on the subject. Not only that, but these studies cover a very comprehensive range of variables and include various kinds of populations that vary in age, background, dieting history/disorder history, body composition/BMI status, exercise level, gender, and much more. Study variables differ greatly within these study designs as well, such as the types of diets prescribed and their macronutrient ratios (high fat, high carb, etc.), the kinds of foods eaten (candy vs. peanuts), and the methods in which subjects were eating (nibbling/grazing vs. gorging) to name a few.

So… there’s basically a LOT of variation within this topic.

 

With that said, it’s best we break it down and cover the main adaptations and concepts we’ve come to understand more about because of these studies:

  1. Body weight, body composition, adipose tissue vs. lean body mass
  2. Energy metabolism, behavioral traits, and human variability

 

Changes in Body Weight and Composition

It’s no surprise that a linear relationship exists between weight gain and the number of overfed calories. Between free-living and in-patient (metabolic ward) subjects in these studies, weight gain patterns were similar, albeit within a wide range of about 1.4 to 8.1 kg (or 3 to 18 lbs.) of weight gain.

 

There is a substantial amount of human variability in response to chronic overfeeding. This wide range in weight gain goes to show the first example variability that can be observed person to person. 3 pounds doesn’t seem like much, but 18 pounds is a very different story!

 

Factors to consider

It should be noted that the studies reviewed were ones that prescribed either a fixed number of overfeeding calories over their estimated maintenance intakes or a percentage of daily energy intake based on baseline RMR.

 

Some noteworthy variables that could play a part in this inconsistency include:

  • The accuracy of baseline estimates as they relate to energy expenditure/weight maintenance. 
  • Macronutrient ratios of the overfed calories. Higher protein intakes show an impact on reducing variation in response to weight gain.
  • Different levels energy expenditure among the subjects. Fidgeting and low-energy costing activities that take place constantly day to day. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) can add significant amounts of variability to one’s expenditure.

 

Fat Mass and Lean Mass

The moment we’ve been waiting for – what does our lean body mass gain look like if we drastically overfeed calories?

 

Well it doesn’t look too good as most of the weight gain that occurs from overfeeding is in adipose tissue relative to lean mass gains. Across the studies included in this review, lean body mass gains are likely to be less than the gains observed in body fat (about 30-40% from LBM and ~60% of the increase from fat mass).

Obviously, there’s quite a strong relationship between the number of calories overfed and the resulting weight gain. We knew this for the most part (calories in versus calories out). The more interesting part is the variances seen among the subjects; it’s reported that subjects who were considered the highest gainers gained three times as much weight as the lowest gainers.

 

It should be noted, however, that the majority of these study populations were considered to be overweight and obese and were not performing any extra physical activity or resistance training, so these outcomes should be interpreted considering those variables.

 

A Key Point

One major thing we can take away here is the idea that not every individual with respond the same under similar circumstances. This is especially so when body composition changes and weight management is concerned. We see this all the time with body fat setpoints, rates of weight loss/weight gain, and the many variations with caloric intakes/metabolic rates; it is simply something we cannot fully predict with so many factors at play.

There’s a much bigger picture to grasp regarding overfeeding. In the next part, we’ll dive more into changes in metabolic rates and energy expenditure, noteworthy behavioral traits that relate to overfeeding, and how we apply these points to ourselves and our clients.

 

References:

Bray, G.A., Bouchard, C. The biology of human overfeeding: a systematic review. Obesity Reviews. 2020; 1-78.

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When is Overeating Warranted?

Not sure if I can call this title clickbait per se, but it’s certainly not an article you’d expect to see from most online coaches. But that’s exactly why I wanted to write an article on it because it’s such a nuanced discussion. A short post wouldn’t do this topic justice.

 

First, let’s define overeating for the purposes of this article:

Overeating would be considered anytime someone actively chooses to eat past their normal calorie goals with intention. These meals are typically calorie dense.

 

Notice how I used the words ‘chose to eat’ to distinguish it from binge eating. Binge eating is very different than overeating. Bingeing certainly has a physical component i.e. generally a lot of calories but also has the accompanying mental component i.e. felt compelled to eat, felt out of control while eating.

So, why am I even bringing up overeating? When would this even be relevant? Doesn’t living a healthy, balanced and flexible lifestyle mean you never have to overeat?

 

Yes, and no.

 

Yes, because if you are truly satisfied with what you’re eating and you have a great relationship with food, the chances that you want to overeat are much less. No, because sometimes… well you just want to eat (more than normal) based on the circumstance.

You might want to try a new restaurant that just opened up.

You might want that ridiculous burger and fries from your favorite spot.

You might want to celebrate with some friends and grab one too many drinks.

 

Regardless of the specific reason, there will be times in your life where you will choose to eat more than normal simply because you want to, not because you were pressured to eat more or because you felt compelled to binge. Knowing how to navigate these situations will set you up for success and will completely change the narrative from an uncontrolled binge fest to a fun night out.

 

From my coaching experience, these are three most important components that warrant overeating:

  1. The client didn’t restrict beforehand.
  2. The client didn’t binge after.
  3. The client didn’t look at the meal as something that was out of their control.

Now, let’s break those down.

 

Not restricting beforehand

Like most words, ‘restriction’ (within the dietary community) has many connotations. Restriction to one person might look like eating their normal high protein meals but keeping the carbs and fats tighter, while restriction to another person might look like fasting predominantly all day before their meal. The former is a great approach, and one we recommend, the latter is not.

Physiologically, going into any meal starving is setting you up for poor decisions. Mentally, it creates a negative mindset around any sort of ‘off plan’ eating which is the exact downfall of dichotomous thinking in general. So yes, I encourage employing some moderate restriction before you know you’re going to eat a large meal but don’t fast the entire day out of fear.

 

Not bingeing afterward

Another common issue we see with dichotomous thinking around food is the inability to regulate food intake even after someone is full. Using the above example, if you go enjoy a burger and fries you’ll like be full when you get home. So why are you going to the pantry to grab a snack or raid the freezer? If you’ve done this, you are not alone, but it’s something that needs to be worked on.

This type of “fuck it I’ve blown my diet” thinking is a hallmark of an unhealthy relationship with food. In this situation [ occasional, planned overeating ] clients who eat said meal and then continue their day or night as normal, with no subsequent bingeing, often suffer from no negative psychological issues from the meal where they overate.

 

Didn’t look at the meal as out of their control

Out of the list, this is the most important component by far. Whenever a client looks at something as out of their control, there are negative consequences. In the context of food, viewing it as ‘out of their control’ takes away the power from the client and gives it to food.

 

Food does not control you. You are always in control of what you eat or don’t eat.

 

This can be a huge hurdle for many clients, and something that might take months, and even years to correct, but always viewing yourself as in control of what and how much you’re eating is absolutely essential for a healthy relationship with food. This also allows the occasional celebratory meal out or epic brunch without deleterious effects afterwards.

 

I’ll close out the article with an example of what this looks like in practice. Say for example I’m visiting a city I love with great food, somewhere like Chicago or Vegas. Not every meal will be an extravagant spread of high calorie choices, but you bet your ass I’m going to eat a few big meals and have a few drinks (okay, a lot of drinks… you guys know how I roll). I don’t unnecessarily restrict before the trip or start to binge after and I certainly go into meal feeling empowered with my choice on what to eat at each restaurant. Remember, everything you eat is a choice.

 

Struggling with knowing how to balance your intake without going to extremes is hard and is something that takes a lot of deep work to correct. This process is something Team LoCoFit works hard to educate and coach our clients through. If you need help on this journey, apply for coaching here. We look forward to helping you!

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Anorexia Nervosa

As we know from the Team LoCoFit newsletter article on Binge Eating Disorder (BED), eating disorders are psychiatric conditions that present with severe derangements surrounding eating behaviors that ultimately lead to psychological as well as physiological damage.

Anorexia Nervosa (AN), which literally translates to “without appetite,” is an eating disorder with an etiology rooted in self-starvation, excessive dieting, severe weight loss and distorted body image with the underlying fear of gaining weight or being “fat”. Individuals with AN typically display characteristics of low self-esteem, the desire for perfection, and obsessiveness. AN has one of the highest death rates of any psychiatric disorder, so it is of utmost importance to receive a diagnosis and seek help from an interdisciplinary healthcare team in order to treat this disorder.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) an individual must meet the following criteria in order to be diagnosed with AN:


  1. Restriction of energy intake relative to requirements leading to a significantly low body weight in the context of age, sex, development trajectory, and physical health.
  2. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight
  3. Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of seriousness of the current low body weight. 

** low weight/underweight can be defined as a BMI of less than or equal to 18.5
 
It is important to acknowledge, however, that even if not all of the above criteria are met, and individual could still present with a serious eating disorder. There are actually two subtypes to AN: restricting type and binge-eating/purging type. Restriction relating to food intake, and purging relating to either self-induced vomiting or purging with excessive exercise to “burn off” calories. 
 
There are specific emotional and behavior warning signs and symptoms that may be apparent in those with AN, along with physiological symptoms that are induced by the self-starvation/aggressive restriction. An individual who is struggling with AN may present with the following:

  • Preoccupation with weight, food, calories
  • Commenting on feeling “fat”
  • Development of food rituals
  • Severe and selective restriction of food intake 
  • Feeling the need to “burn off” food
  • Making excuses to avoid mealtimes or to avoid having to eat in a social setting
  • Intense fear of gaining weight
  • Strong need for control 
  • Decreased ability to regulate internal temperature (ex. feeling cold all of the time)
  • Bowel irregularities
  • Cognitive impairment (ex. brain fog)
  • Fatigue 
  • Mood swings
  • Loss of menstrual cycle

 
As is the case with BED, an interdisciplinary team is required in order to provide and monitor all medical, nutritional, and behavioral aspects of recovery. Treatment for AN will include the implementation of structured mealtimes, consumption of small frequent meals, and gradually increasing calories in roughly 100-200 calorie increments in order to avoid refeeding syndrome. The ultimate goal during treatment will be to increased intake while simultaneously decreasing energy output until the goal weight has been achieved. 
 
To conclude, I will use the same statement from the BED newsletter because it is incredibly fitting across the board of all eating disorders.

“If you or anyone you know feels that this article is relatable, it is crucial to seek help from a team of professional healthcare providers. Eating disorders appear to have a low reported incidence rate not because they are not abundant in our society, (especially with the rise in social media) but because so few individuals decide to seek treatment. Just because not everyone is telling their story or making their struggles known does not mean they are not living it. It is scary to take the dive toward reversing behaviors and ways of thinking that have become so instilled, it can feel like you are losing control. The reality is that there is nothing braver than facing your inner critic head on and rewriting your story, and you have the power to do so whenever you decide.”

 

If you are interested in learning more about eating disorders, make sure to check out our article on BED as well as episode 33 of the RoundTable.

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Gillian SanFilippo

Sensory-Specific Satiety

In a recent article, we dove into food variety, its role, and the long-term impact that it can have on our body composition and eating habits. A higher food variety acts as a double-edged sword in that, depending on the type of foods we’re obtaining variety from, it can lead us to eat in excess and gain unnecessary body fat over time. Check out that article here.

A key player in why a wide food variety can have such detrimental effects on our eating behaviors stems from something known as sensory-specific satiety.

 

What is Sensory-Specific Satiety?

Sensory-specific satiety (SSS) is a satiation mechanism defined as, “the decline in pleasantness of the flavor of a specific food that has just been eaten in contrast to other non-consumed foods.” In other words, as we continuously eat a particular food item, our desire to eat that same food item should diminish over time.

The relationship between SSS and food variety is not unheard of either. So, since sensory-specific satiety is specific for eaten foods/snack items, when we have such a high variety of foods available to us (i.e. our current food environment), it can take longer for us to feel satiation from all of these foods. This, in turn, leads to a greater total caloric intake.

 

Increased Stimulation = Increased Intake

A study was conducted in order to learn more about the relationship that exists between sensory-specific satiety and a wide food variety. Researchers wanted to create a design using ‘fast food’ type meals and condiments, since these more hyperpalatable meals are thought to play a larger role in increased food intakes and the rise of obesity as a whole.

21 males were put through 3 randomized sessions over a span of 3 weeks (1 session per week). Each session consisted of having the men eat a 2-course meal consisting of fries and brownie cakes – with or without condiments. (Side note: sign me up).


What differed between each of these sessions was the way in which their meals were presented to them. The sessions were designed as follows:

 

  • The “monotonous” session – the two courses (fries and brownies), were offered without condiments and each was eaten ad libitum (in other words, as much as the subjects wanted).

 

  • The “successive” session – fries were offered first without condiments, then fries with one of the condiments, and finally fries with the other condiment were offered. Each condiment was offered once the subject finished eating the preceding food. This same procedure was repeated for the brownie cakes in the second course.

 

  • The “simultaneous” session – both condiments were made freely available to the subjects during the entirety of each course (also eaten ad libitum).

 

Throughout these sessions, the subjects were given subjective ratings in order to assess their flavor-pleasure ratings (food’s pleasantness before and following courses), hunger, olfactory evaluations (sense of smell and perceived pleasure regarding foods/condiments), and their reasons for terminating each course when they did.

 

Sensory Satiety Disruption

The total amount of food eaten and even the duration of each course was shown to differ depending on the session. The total food intake was 40% and 35% higher on average in the simultaneous and successive sessions, respectively, than the monotonous session. Total caloric intake was shown to be about 41% and 24% greater for the simultaneous and successive sessions than in the monotonous one as well.

A lot can be said for the perceived pleasantness as each course went on. As expected, when considering the concept of sensory-specific satiety, flavor-pleasure ratings for each course did decrease after ad libitumingestion. So, as those meals went on the subjects got tired of those flavors and sensations or full, and subsequently terminated their meals. However, after presenting the meal’s first condiment (ketchup for the fries, vanilla cream for the brownies), this triggered the subjects to resume their eating further.

Essentially, the addition of the condiments was able to stimulate further food consumption, even after the subjects had “finished” their meals. New flavors and textures being presented to their meals provided the subjects more variety, allowing those additions to then weaken the sensory satiety of the subjects. This relates to what we already know about more ‘monotonous’ diets and their effectiveness when cravings and hunger are taken into account.

 

This serves as a great example of how food variety can easily alter our eating without us even realizing. As we know food variety can be good or bad depending on where it’s coming from, so being aware of where we get that variety while also considering our own goals and baseline habits is important to take note of regardless.

 

References:

Brondel, L., Romer, M., Wymelbeke, V.V., et al. Variety enhances food intake in humans: role of sensory-specific satiety. Physiology and Behavior 2009; 97: 44-51.

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Balancing Your Goals with Your Social Life

Being extreme, on either spectrum, towards your diet or training program is actually quite easy. Bringing your Tupperware to a dinner or skipping a party because you need to lift… easy. Saying F it and eating everything in sight at a family dinner or missing a workout because you’re hungover… easy. Actually being balanced with your goals is much, much harder. But harder does not mean impossible – we actually work through this with clients all the time!

 

Like anything, this takes a nuanced approach for each client situation.

 

The spectrum of rigidity to flexibility is 100% dependent on the clients goals and the timeline of said goals.

 

Is the client a month out from a physique competition?

Is the client cutting weight for a performance event in a few weeks?

Is the client making the last push on their fat loss phase?

 

These extreme situations call for more rigid measures, particularly the first two. If you’re in these situations, sticking with your plan and enjoying a social event without eating is totally possible. Remember, you’re socializing to be (hopefully) social, and not just to eat.

But outside of these extreme situations, allowing for more flexibility when parties or dinners come up is a key aspect of our coaching. Being flexible, enjoying a meal and a few drinks within moderation is what Team LoCoFit is all about!

Below are a few tips to help you through the rest of the summer, whether you’re traveling or enjoying social events.

 

Dining at a restaurant

One of the worst things to do before eating out is to essentially fast all (or most of) the day. You know that feeling when you go to the grocery store hungry and start buying random snacks?? That principle applies here too, except with appetizers and maybe one too many drinks. Eating your normal meals before (or after, if you’re grabbing breakfast or brunch!) is crucial for you to make good decisions when you’re eating out.

Also, perpetually fasting before you eat out at a restaurant reinforces the idea that restriction is necessary if you’re going to enjoy a meal out. It’s not and that shouldn’t be part of your thought pattern if you want a healthy relationship with food.

When it’s time to order, center your meal around a high protein option and be moderate with your portions on sides. If you’d rather have a few drinks, be lighter with the options you order. If you’d rather have dessert, skip the drinks. If you decide to have both, own the decision and enjoy the meal without any added guilt.

 

Attending an event

The same rules apply for an event like a BBQ or celebration: Eat beforehand! This is actually even more important at an event because there will likely be tons of food there and out for many hours. I.e. grazing central. Eating beforehand will make sure you don’t show up to the party and bulldoze the chips and dip.

One simple but easy thing to do also is to bring something! Ask the host what they’ll be having and what you can contribute. This way you at least know one side that will be there in case all other options are choices you’d rather not eat or don’t necessarily align with your goals.

When it comes time to eat, scope out all your options first. Again, center the meal around protein and pick a few favorites that you see set out. Plate a meal and sit down to eat it versus grazing all day on snacks.

 

Traveling

When traveling, you may or may not have kitchen access. If you do, it’s incredibly easy to make good choices even while on vacation. Stock up on your essentials at the store and continue to eat mostly high protein, nutrient dense foods.

 

Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean you need to mainline pastries and vodka.

 

Pack your daily supplements and protein powder, drink lots of water and eat quality meals. When you do that 80% of the time, enjoying a calorie dense dinner or a few drinks on the water fit in perfectly.

If you don’t have kitchen access, don’t worry! Yes, it’s harder to make quality choices when you eat out the options are there; you just have to order them. Structure most of your meals around high protein, moderate carb-fat choices and choose one of the meals to be a bit more indulgent than the others. Typically when I travel, this is what I’ll do: Eat mostly ‘normal’ meals earlier in the day and then be a bit looser with my choices at dinner.

 

Discussing your goals with family and friends

To round out the discussion about balancing your goals with your social life, we can’t ignore the pressure or misunderstanding that family or friends often have towards your goals. This can be especially hard if you’ve had any eating issues or disorders in the past.

Number one, you need to explain why you have certain goals and what you’re actively working towards. People often judge what they don’t understand, so if they don’t understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it, they may innocuously cast judgment on said goals.

Next, try and see the critiques from a detached perspective.

 

Are you being overly rigid when you don’t need to be?

Are you judging your family and friends for their goals without realizing it?

Are they harshly criticizing you without understanding your intentions?

Are they simply just not going to support your goals no matter what?

 

These are hard conversations to have, with yourself and with others, but they are necessary. Sometimes we don’t realize how we’re projecting ourselves onto others; and vice versa. Ultimately, some of your closest friends or family won’t understand your goals and that’s okay. As long as you’re not patronizing or harming them, continue to hit your goals and just smile and nod.

Having a rich social life doesn’t mean you have to trash your diet or training goals, but it does mean finding a particular balance that works for you in this exact moment with your exact goals. Like everything else, this takes time and focused work but it’s possible to do both.

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Minerals

Last week we covered vitamins that tend to spark questions in regard to supplementation. Today we will take a look at some of the most common minerals and why they are important, particularly for their roles in bone health, muscular contraction, and hydration during these summer months!

 

Calcium

Calcium just so happens to be the most abundant mineral found within the body. Often when we think of calcium, we think about how this minerals aids in creating and maintaining strong bones. While this is certainly one of calcium’s major responsibilities (99% of calcium is stored in the bones and teeth), it is also necessary for nerve and cardiac function, muscular contractions, and blood clotting. The DRI for males ages 19-70 is 1000 mg/day and for females ages 19-50 it is 1000 mg/day, then increasing to 1,200 mg/day for ages 50-70. Common food sources of calcium include yogurt, cheese, leafy greens, and sardines. If you are deficient in calcium, you are at increased risk for osteomalacia and osteoporosis.

 

Magnesium

Magnesium is a mineral that is required for DNA/RNA synthesis making it crucial for energy production. 50-60% of the body’s magnesium is stored in the bones. Additionally, magnesium citrate may be helpful for those experiencing constipation as it can help to relax smooth muscles. In fact, if you are deficient in magnesium you may experience some muscle spasms, tremors, and/or irritability. The DRI for magnesium for men is 420 mg/day and 320 mg/day for females. You can consume magnesium in your diet by way of nuts, seeds, and grains. Magnesium will be most often be food in plant foods.

 

Sodium

Sodium is a well-known mineral in the world of athletics for its role as an important electrolyte to replenish during training, particularly in these hot summer months. Sodium is responsible for regulating muscular contractions, maintaining proper nerve function, and aids in maintaining appropriate blood pressure levels. If your sodium intake is lacking you may experience fatigue, dizziness, or confusion. The DRI for sodium for both males and females is 1.5 g/day which can be consumed via table salt, canned foods, and many processed foods.

 

Potassium

Last but not least we have potassium, which is another major cation found in the intracellular fluid along with sodium. Potassium is necessary for muscle contraction and if you are deficient, you may find that you are experiencing muscular weakness. The DRI for both males and females is 4.7 g/day and can be consumed through the diet with food such as potatoes, yogurt, tomato juice and fish.

 

While this is not an extensive list of minerals, they are typically the ones that we are coaches are looking out to make sure that our clients are consuming adequate amounts of in order to maintain appropriate bone health, help generate appropriate muscle contractions, and regulate hydration status.

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Gillian SanFilippo

BCAAs: Are They Worth It?

The fitness and supplement industries have grown immensely and with all the bullshit misinformation we already have to sift through, there are plenty of opportunities in there to also push unnecessary supplements onto people who don’t know what they’re really getting out of them… or if they are even worth the money.

I’ll start with this. Supplements are not essential if you’re looking to change your physique and improve your lifestyle. I’m always upfront with my clients about that point as supplements are exactly what their name implies – to supplement what you’re already doing. So, if you don’t already have a handle on your diet and training habits, there is no reason for you to really consider additional supplements just yet.

 

You can’t expect to fix or establish foundational habits with fat burners or BCAAs…

 

Speaking of Branched Chain Amino Acids…

BCAAs and blends of the sort are notorious for being added into supplements and pushed with the claims of aiding in muscle growth and performance.

 

Now, amino acids are the building blocks of protein and allow us to build and repair muscle. Leucine, specifically, is shown to be a key player in stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This makes it reasonable for people to believe that BCAA supplements can do the same job and help to facilitate muscle growth. However, the literature tell us otherwise.

 

When compared to whole food sources of protein (an equivalent of 20g whey), BCAA supplementation alone produced a protein synthesis response of about only half of that provided from the whey protein.

 

In a recent publication, when adequate, daily protein intake was accounted for (roughly double that of the RDA guidelines), high doses of leucine had no additional benefit to muscle gains and strength in conjunction with a 12-week resistance training program.

 

Total Protein Intake Is Key
If you’re getting enough high-quality protein each day, odds are that you’re already obtaining all of your essential amino acids via the diet. An additional BCAA supplement wouldn’t enhance your results any further if you’ve already got your protein intake covered! It would be an extra cost, more than anything.

 

Personally, I have no issue getting my protein in, though I still like to throw in Essential Amino Acids (EAAs) every now and again as just another means of getting my water in for the day. Nothing more to it for me really; although, EAA’s are very helpful for vegan and vegetarian clients who have a harder time hitting all essential amino acids via the diet alone. They’ve also been shown to help with muscle protein breakdown and recovery, but again total protein is most important.

 

When it comes to protein intake, we always recommend aiming for about 1 gram per pound of body weight. If you’re newer to tracking and are just getting into new habits, a good guideline to set is to simply place protein in each of your meals – aim for about 25-30 grams of high-quality protein and try to spread those feedings in about 3-4 meals throughout the day.

 

References:

DE Andrade IT, Gualano B, Hevia-LarraÍn V, et al. Leucine Supplementation Has No Further Effect on Training-induced Muscle Adaptations. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2020;52(8):1809-1814. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000002307

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