The Dark Side of Calorie Counting

A great article by Sheleana from Young and Raw called The Dark Side of Calorie Counting on why calorie counting isn't all it's cracked up to be.  For the longest time, I refused to calorie count.  I just made sure I was eating mostly 'healthy'.  And compared to most Americans living off the Standard American Diet (so SAD, indeed), I was.  But when I was in college, my health and my health knowledge isn't what it is today.  But even then, I still didn't calorie count.  The only time I did was a short period of time when I was working on getting into 'Bodybuilder Shape' and in that world macronutrient and calorie needs are monitored very closely.  It worked for me - I lost body fat and looked the best I had in my life....however, I wasn't quite where I wanted to be and knew that I could be.  But at that time, while I was eating milk or processed foods and the like, I was still eating meat, cottage cheese and the like.  I then became pregnant.  Fast forward 9 months, and my changes that I was making for the benefit of my baby, took my health to a whole new level.  I wasn't planning on cutting out meat, but it happened (and I love it!!).  I didn't make it a goal to be Vegan (well, mostly Vegan right now!) but suddenly it just happened.  And one of the many plus sides to that??  I don't have to count calories - I have never even bothered since I had my baby.  I don't count protein or carbs or sugar. I eat plants as much as I possibly can and the weight (more specifically the body fat) just rolls off.  I do lift weights three times a week and try to squeeze in some High Intensity Interval Training or a jog or a walk with my baby whenever I can.  But no calorie counting here for me - not again!

There are also some great tips on what to do and what NOT to do to lose weight! I agree with them!

Check This Out!

My cousin totally transformed herself after her last baby using Turbo Jam. She is now a certified teacher and her energy and motivation is awesome. She went out to New York be a part of the new infomercial for Turbo Jam sometime last year and now it's on their website!! She's toward the end of it but you can also see her picture down at the bottom of the page. It just goes to show you how there is no easy, magical pill that will help you lose FAT and, most importantly, keep MUSCLE. It's HARD WORK and it involves a lot of sweat and determination. What an awesome example!

Does Aerobics Make You Lose Muscle?

By Tom Venuto, Competitive Bodybuilder & Personal Trainer


Yes, it's true. It's a scientifically proven fact that muscle proteins are broken down and used for energy during aerobic exercise. But don't worry, you are constantly breaking down and re building muscle tissue anyway. This process is called "protein turnover." Your body is constantly alternating back and forth between anabolic (building) and catabolic (breaking down) cycles. That's just a normal part of life. Your goal is simply to tip the scales slightly in favor of increasing the anabolic side and reducing the catabolic side just enough so you stay on the anabolic side and you gain or at least maintain muscle.

This fact of human physiology has often been taken out of context and used to scare people into not doing cardiovascular exercise for fear of losing muscle. When you fast overnight as you sleep, you lose muscle too, but that doesn't mean you should stop sleeping!

Sure, it's possible for you to lose muscle from doing too much cardio, but it's highly unlikely. Shying away from cardio completely because you think you'll lose muscle is a huge mistake. Only excessive amounts of cardio would cause you to lose muscle because over-training tips the scale towards the catabolic side. It's difficult to generalize and pinpoint one specific amount as too much, but I think it's safe to assume that just about anyone could do up to 45 -60 minutes of cardio a day, 6 to 7 days a week without losing any muscle - as long as the proper nutritional support is provided.

Trainer John Parillo has always been an advocate of lots of aerobics, even for his bodybuilder clients who are trying to gain muscle mass.

"Aerobics can enhance your recovery from weight training by promoting blood flow and oxygen transport to your muscles," says Parillo. "Aerobics forces oxygen through your body, increasing the number and size of your blood vessels. Blood vessels are the 'supply routes' that transport oxygen and nutrients to body tissues, including muscles, and carry waste products away for muscular growth, repair and recovery. The expansion of this circulatory network is called 'cardiovascular density.'"

So, according to Parillo, aerobics can actually enhance recovery from weight training and increase muscular growth by developing the circulatory pathways that provide nourishment to the muscles. Cardiovascular training is important for fat burning, for good health and for muscle-building.

Losing muscle has more to do with inadequate diet than with excessive aerobics. If you suspect you are losing muscle there are four likely causes:

1. You are not eating enough protein. Protein is the only nutrient that is actually used to build muscle. To stay anabolic you must eat five to six protein containing meals. Each meal should be spaced out approximately three hours apart. Research has proven that if you are physically active, you need a minimum of .8 grams to 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

2. Your carbohydrates are too low. Low carb diets are often used for fat loss, but it is a mistake to cut your carbs too drastically. Carbohydrates are protein-sparing, so even if you are eating large amounts of protein, you can still lose muscle if you your carbs are too low.

3. You are not eating enough calories to support muscle growth. This is the most common cause of muscle loss. When your calories are too low, your body goes into "starvation mode." Your metabolism slows down and your body actually burns muscle tissue to conserve energy. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, requiring a great deal of caloric energy just to maintain it. That's why your body will shed muscle if it thinks you are starving.

4. You are not training with weights. It is a common misconception that if you want to lose weight, you should start with cardio only and add the weights later - another big mistake! It is the weight training that keeps you from losing muscle while you are dieting.


You are much more likely to lose muscle from not eating enough than you are from doing too much cardio. All too often, people are afraid to eat a lot and do a lot of cardio at the same time. It doesn't seem to make sense. Logically, it seems like the two would cancel each other out - but the opposite is true. Many people believe they must "starve" the fat by drastically lowering calories. Unfortunately, this approach can cause you to lose muscle along with the fat. The only way to maintain your lean mass while losing fat is to feed the muscles with plenty of nutritious calories and at the same time, burn the fat off with cardio.

Whether your goal is muscle development, fat loss or both, you should always include some form of cardiovascular activity as part of your training program. Unless you're doing some kind of ultra-endurance regimen, AEROBICS DOES NOT CAUSE MUSCLE LOSS, in fact it supports the pathways that help you build it!

Weight Watchers and McDonald's....Seriously??

A friend in my neighborhood suggested some really great sites (thank you!) to read. As I was perusing through some articles I noticed one titled "Weight Watchers says eat at McDonald's to lose weight." What??? Well, apparenty Weight Watchers has put their stamp on chicken mcnuggets and a few other menu items as 'healthy' food!! Okay sure...and I weigh 90 lbs and model for Victoria Secret. Read the article - I love how the writer puts it all into perspective with words and my favorite part is this right here:

We live in a world where corporate promotional lies are disgusting at best, and criminal at worst. We're told that psychiatric drugs will make you happy, that chemotherapy will make you healthy and that eating at McDonald's will make you lose weight. We're told that sugary junk drinks will give you "energy", that toxic vaccines are necessary for your immune system to work correctly and that buying silly pink-ribbon products will somehow cure cancer.

At the same time, we're told that vitamins are dangerous, that sunlight causes cancer and that there's no such thing as a cure for type-2 diabetes. Everything that's good for you is discredited as bad while everything that's toxic is hyped up as "healthy."

I suppose in light of the corporate-sponsored sick-care insanity that passes for medical advice these days, the idea that eating at McDonald's will make you lose weight doesn't seem as insane as it really should.

But that doesn't make it any more true.

In a world gone mad with dietary misinformation touting fictional foods, insanity can now be marketed to the intoxicated mainstream as if it somehow made sense.

... and people swallow it.

Heavy Weight Training vs. Light Weight Training

I am a big believer in weight training. It's important for muscle and bone. I found an article that hits on points that I would like to say but have less expertise to say them. I know that women are encourage to do light weight with more reps, that that is how they will burn the fat and become trim. I say nay. Although it is beneficial for your short-twitch fibers, there is more benefit from heavy weight training in conjunction with a proper diet.


"For years, one debate that has been tossed back and forth in just about every gym and fitness center across the country is; which is better, heavy resistance training or light resistance training? A variety of factors play into this debate, and the answers may not be as obvious as it may seem.

For years (and still today) many weight training enthusiasts thought that the key to getting stronger and building bigger muscles was simply to perform heavy resistance training by lifting big weights. Conversely, it was also thought that if an individual wanted to increase muscle tone or improve weight loss, heavy weights were the enemy and one must aim for higher reps with lighter weight. Years of experience have shown us that this is not always the case.

Muscles grow when they are forced to compensate for extra work. Think about when you first began lifting weights. Within a few months, the muscle growth you experienced was phenomenal, but after a while it dramatically slowed down. This initial explosion of muscle growth was due the fact that your body was not accustomed to lifting weights. Therefore, your muscles rapidly began to grow in size to keep up with their newly acquired task of weight training.

Let’s say you always follow a heavy resistance training program when you go to the gym. You will undoubtedly hit a plateau when you can no longer push any heavier weight. Your muscle growth has stalled. You decide to incorporate a higher rep range instead of your normal one, and suddenly your muscle growth once again takes off. This different training style has caused your muscles to adjust for their newfound workload.

On the flip side, if you constantly train with lighter weight and higher reps, then you switch to lower reps with heavy weight, the same spurt of new muscle growth may happen.

Muscle fibers are categorized into two classes: fast twitch and slow twitch. When you consistently train with heavy weights at lower reps, you focus more on your fast twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers are excellent at generating short bursts of strength or speed. Slow twitch fibers are more efficient at generating continuous muscle contractions over longer periods of time, perfect for light resistance training with a high rep range. When you switch up your training, you can hit both of these muscle fiber types instead of focusing on one.

Of course, we cannot forget about the all-important role that nutrition plays in muscle growth. You can spend all day in the gym, training with both heavy and light weight and still never gain another ounce of muscle if your don’t consume enough calories to fuel growth.

Let’s go back to our scenario of our first few months in the gym. Back then, it didn’t really matter what you were eating, it seemed that everything was helping you to gain more muscle. This approach no longer works after a few months, and to keep adding muscle, you must consume adequate protein and calories.

Now, as far as the idea that light resistance training with high reps will help tighten up and tone muscles, think about this; when a bodybuilder begins their contest preparation, they don’t all of the sudden switch to lighter weight to help strip body fat. The entire outcome of their contest prep depends on their nutrition plan. They could do sets of 100 reps, but if all they consumed were cheeseburgers, their physique will not come in looking its best. Since this is true of a bodybuilder preparing for a contest, wouldn’t the same rule apply to the average person who wants to look better? Absolutely.

The human body is remarkably adaptable. In order to keep muscles growing, you must challenge them in different ways, and be sure to consume a proper diet. Try not to fall into the trap of doing the same workout day in and day out. As the saying goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” "


Author's Bio
Tim Mielke
Author and Supplement Expert

I Eat Healthy!!

Paul and I were talking the other night about healthy lifestyles and food choices. To us, it's easy to see through the false advertising and dishonest campaigns telling us that their food is healthy...even though it can be bought at a drive-thru or it comes as a frozen meal or it claims to be made with whole grain!! My favorite is "It's wheat bread, so it's healthy". Ha ha ha ha ha. I think "Come on, people!!" It is alarming how many people have not been taught one tiny ounce of proper eating and nutrition and therefore believe the 'health industries' hype as true.

As we are discussing this, Paul mentions a lady who he works with (I don't know names) that was complaining about not being able to lose weight. "I eat healthy!," she says. Paul said: "You're kidding, right?? Just because the canned soup you eat every day says Healthy Choice, doesn't mean it is. You are consuming loads of chemicals and preservatives and hello, have you ever looked at the sodium content?? It's not hard to see why you retain water." Right to the point, my husband.

It's hard to know what is really good for you when people claim something has all of these health benefits and such. But, things like canned soup - "Come on, people!!"