The Fitness Guru

Bridgette asks: You always hear people say that the “trouble areas” of your body are the last to start losing inches. For example, I tend to put on weight first in my thigh area (definitely my trouble spot) and last in my mid-section. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had significant loss in my waist, yet haven’t lost even a centimeter in my thighs. So, tell me, is it truth or a myth that what someone would refer to as their “trouble areas” are always the last to show any sign of weight loss? Thanks!

Bridgette, good question. It reminds me of the old saying, “Look for something lost and you’ll always find it in the last place you look.” You are probably exercising and eating right in an effort to lose some pounds and inches and that is terrific. It may be that there is a particular are that, when you look in the mirror, your critical eye is immediately drawn to. That’s the case for many, many, many people. Your focus may be on that area for numerous reasons dating all the way back to childhood insecurities, and over time, you develop a hyper-critical view. Consequently, as you lose weight, you will always be slightly more critical of that area than others.

Now you may really have some extra inches in those areas. That may be the cause of your initial feelings. Through puberty, your body will build fat cells throughout the body. No matter how hard you work, you can shrink those cells, but you can never get rid of those cells. As you exercise, your body will burn fat from throughout your body without any sort of of strategy. So as you burn fat, stores will shrink from all the fat deposits. You can’t focus your burn in one particular area, or what people call “spot reducing”. It simply isn’t possible. What you can do is continue to burn your fat stores knowing that, at some point, you will get to the area you want to reduce. And the size of the fat cells will shrink, but they will not disappear.

A good friend of mine, a professional dancer, used to work out like a madman. He would dance several hours every day, work out, eat right, everything that you should be doing. But he had a little fat on his thighs that drove him nuts. As he had to stare in the mirror hour after hour for his profession, and as his thighs drove him crazy as the one imperfect area on his body, he finally had liposuction on that area. That is the only way to rid an area of the fat cells.

So keep up the work and know that you will hit those spots soon enough. You just need to be patient and keep fighting the good fight.

Rock on!

Here’s some of this week’s high points, minus Tiger references……though if you have anything good and NEW please feel free to leave it in the “comments”.

So grab a cup of coffee and check it out……..

Mom and son set up pot shop

Dad’s bad dancing is all due to evolution. But does that make it ok?

Can we please help Santa toward a healthier lifestyle?

800,000 doses of pediatric swine flu vaccine are recalled. But no one seems all that concerned.

NYC Department of Health is kind enough to make a video discouraging soda pop consumption. Good luck with this one…..

You know soda and soft drinks are bad for you, don’t you? Well, the NYC Department of Health isn’t really sure that you know. So they have been kind enough to make a little video to help……ummmm…..explain the effects of……ummmm…….drinking these…..drinks.

Enjoy (?) and feel free to pass it along to your favorite soda pop drinker.

Oh, and thanks to Seth Hart for sending this to me. I’m calling you when the nightmares begin.

Yesterday, I got into a pretty heated debate over the calorie count of an Italian Ice. It was a funny exchange as the guesses were all over the map. The answer is simple: it depends on a) the size of the serving, and b) the amount of sugar in the ice itself. As an Italian Ice is entirely water and sugar, you can estimate the calorie count based on the sugar content: roughly 4.5 calories for every gram of sugar.

But it is rarely that simple to deduce calorie calorie content when eating out. Restaurants have started posting calorie content of their menus. I have stood at the counter on many occasions and wondered what on earth I could eat, given the posted facts. Now, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, those numbers, which many consumer have found discouraging, may not even give us the entire story. According to the article, the calorie counts may be underestimated. Scripps television stations sent out several dishes and found underestimates by up to 33%. The restaurants respond that not all dishes can be prepared at all the restaurants the same way. Okay….

I worked for a very small restaurant chain very briefly a few years ago. This place prided itself on being fast, relatively inexpensive and healthy. They posted calorie content before it was the law. But they had arrived at their numbers using software that they had downloaded off the internet– not quite food science and certainly not consumer friendly. When customers started to question the numbers, ownership decided that it was time to send out the food and get accurate readings. But then they found that food testing labs can be difficult to work with and extremely expensive. Ownership didn’t like the numbers that were coming back in and, due to some numbers that were obviously inaccurate (including sodium levels in a salt free dish) decided that the labs should be scrapped. When last I checked, they were using the internet numbers. Scripps can send out one or two dishes for an investigative piece, but for the restaurant to send out the entire menu and get quality, accurate numbers is simply not cost effective.

So where does that leave the us, the consumers? Screwed. We feel that we are so responsible by looking at the calorie contents and making better decisions but then we find out that even those better decisions may be poor. And these little inconsistencies of 50 calories here and 100 calories there can lead to carrying additional weight over the course of a week or a month. The most responsible thing we can do is…….

…..avoid the fast food restaurants altogether. I know sometimes it’s impossible to avoid them– trust me, I just got in off a big business trip and there are many places where the options are few and far between. But we have to become aware of eating strategies. Fast food is fast food is fast food. And if you are forced into making the best possible choice in a bad situation, then be aware that you may have to take a little more time to figure out when and where you are going to eat.

In the meantime, we can only hope that someone somewhere is thinking about enforcing some sort of quality control on the posting. Getting restaurants to post them was the first victory. Now we need to insure that the numbers are accurate.

The Bananaheads are at it again.

Every so often, I come across a study that makes me go into the bathroom, close the door, bury my head in a towel and scream obscenities at the top of my lungs. The last one that brought out the cuss in me was a genius little number about how smoking boosted the fat-zapping gene. Yeah, that’s right. Light up a cigarette and your body goes into fat burning mode. So, flip side– stop smoking and odds are you will pack on the fat. Who do you think paid for that little bit of science?
So today, I’m kicking back, still ever-so-slightly relaxed from the holiday weekend and I come across “Exercise not likely to rev up your metabolism.” (Editor’s note: if you click on those two links, they both come up MSNBC. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but why are they so eager to promote these studies? How could they benefit from people just sitting around at home, smoking?)
The study sets about debunking the theory that your metabolism will be revved up for up to 24 hours after a workout. Apparently, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Calorie burn in a 24 hour period was the same for exercisers as it was for couch potatoes. What does that mean? Well, it means that, though you may burn calories while exercising, the likelihood of that burn continuing after you stop is next to nil.
But I tell you what it means in the real world: it will be another glorious reason for people to give up on the idea of exercise. If you are going to the gym to lose weight, and, quick reminder, 66% of our nation needs to lose some weight, and exercise isn’t going to give you those overall benefits, then what is the point?
Here is the point: even if this study is right (and I don’t really think that it is….I don’t know, call it 25 years of experience), exercising regularly will increase your overall calorie burn and metabolic efficiency because you will be far more ACTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE. Sit back on your sofa for an afternoon of TV, then try to go shopping for groceries in the late afternoon. You will have no energy, no desire to drag yourself up from the comfy confines of your cozy cocoon. But workout daily: not only will you burn calories through your workout, adding to caloric deficit and fat/weight loss, but you will also be the kid who is far more likely to take the stairs over the elevator to get to you office. You will be the person standing on the subway and not feeling exhausted because of it. You will be the one who is able to add far more activity to your lifestyle over the following 24 hours than the person who chose to sit still. Your overall calorie burn will be far greater, not because of the exercise, but because you have exercised. Not to mention all the benefits to you heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, circulatory system…..oh and BRAIN!
But leave it to the Bananaheads. They just can’t be happy knowing that the rest of the world is trying to get in a few minutes of exercise while they’re stuck in their stuffy lab with their test tubes and cheeseburgers.

Ok, yes, it kind of misses the irony and it doesn’t have quite the shock power, but, since we celebrated This Is Why You’re Fat, I feel the need to introduce This Is Why You’re Thin. Enjoy!!

Check out this podcast debunking (fun word) some fitness myths.

The Fitness Guru

www.fitnessgurunyc.com