The real key to losing weight is Metabolism!!

but the rate of metabolizing that food is very different. That is why when a diabetic person has a low blood sugar, you give them something without fat to bring their blood sugar up---juice is usually the preferred because of this fact. You would not give a diabetic a piece of steak to treat a low blood sugar, right? My point wasn't so much that as it is you need to eat healthy first and you shouldn't sacrifice the healthy foods otherwise you could spend all of your calories on junk and still be within your calorie range but not be meeting your fitness goals.

I understand that you're trying to help people but you should really update your nutritional information. Most of what you've written isn't correct and while none of what you said will be harmful, you're suggesting that people do a lot of things that really won't do anything towards helping them with their goals. See below.

1.) Breakfast IS Important:

Why is breakfast soooo important? Your body is naturally programmed to conserve as much fat (energy) as possible when it is not being fed trying to protect vital organs and lean muscle tissue.

Metabolic slowdown doesn't occur intra-day and doesn't even occur after 24 hours. 48-72h fasting might start to show metabolic issues but certainly intra-day periods of not-eating are not going to cause ANY metabolic issues whatsoever. Please see www.leangains.com for research to back this up.

When you are sleeping at night, so is your metabolism. Starting your metabolism as soon as you wake-up is vastly important.

Rubbish. Your metabolism doesn't slow down during the night and you will continue to digest food. Sure, you aren't active so you aren't running around burning calories through any activity thermogensis but you're still burning calories. Secondarily and MOST importantly, you're trying to narrow your scope to acute processes when the big picture is key. Your only goal when trying to slim down is to have lipolysis exceed lipogenesis and if you're in a calorie deficit, this happens by itself over time REGARDLESS of the short term effects.

Furthermore, after you eat your metabolism increases due to something called the thermic effect of food. Thermogenesis is the process of how your body increases heat to burn calories.

Thermic effect of food is based on macronutrient content and total calories consumed. It is not based on frequency of feeding. For example, if you eat 5 meals per day at 400 calories each, TEF would dictate that, for example, you'd burn 10% of that each time you eat (I'm using 10% for simplicity). 10% x 400 = 40 and you do this 5 times and burn a total fo 200 calories per day via TEF. If I eat 2000 calories all at once for 1 meal I will burn 10% x 2000 = 200 and we arrive at the same place.

2.) Frequency of Eating:

Pretty much everything you wrote in this section was false, at least the metabolic portions. See above for an explanation of TEF. But, there's part of what you said that I'd like to comment on additionally:

An added benefit of eating every three hours is that you don't get hungry. By never getting hungry, you reduce the chances of overeating, or grabbing something quick and unhealthy just because it's there.

This is personal preference and some people DO feel less hungry eating smaller, frequent meals. However, there's adequate research suggesting otherwise and you can also find that at www.leangains.com.

In short, Ghrelin is a hunger signaling hormone that adapts itself to behavior in that if you employ a specific feeding schedule, Ghrelin will adapt to this and the end result is (for some people) that you "feel" hungry around your feeding times. The bonus to this effect is that if you choose an intermittent style of eating (for example, when I cut weight I only eat between about 2pm and 9pm and it works wonders for me) it can be easier to go longer periods without food.

and more important, when you eat after “starving,” you body will immediately convert the consumed calories to fat. Not good.

This is just physiologically incorrect, entirely.

a.) Regular cardio raises your metabolism while you're doing it, but once your finished the exercise, your metabolism immediately returns to its regular rate. On the other hand, doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio raises your metabolism for hours afterward.

EPOC or Excess PostExercise Oxygen Consumption is quite overstated with HIIT. While this is from 2006, it's from one of the best sources you'll find and I'd speculate that if this were out of date, it would be removed from his site. I'll link you the information for your reading and also copy the summary here:
http://alanaragon.com/myths-under-the-microscope-the-fat-burning-zone-fasted-cardio.html

Summary -- This is a direct quote from Alan Aragon:

: • In acute trials, fat oxidation during exercise tends to be higher in low-intensity treatments, but postexercise fat oxidation and/or energy expenditure tends to be higher in high-intensity treatments.
• Fed subjects consistently experience a greater thermic effect postexercise in both intensity ranges.
• In 24-hr trials, there is no difference in fat oxidation between the 2 types, pointing to a delayed rise in fat oxidation in the high-intensity groups which evens out the field.
• In long-term studies, both linear high-intensity and HIIT training is superior to lower intensities on the whole for maintaining and/or increasing cardiovascular fitness & lean mass, and are at least as effective, and according to some research, far better at reducing bodyfat.

A few final thoughts:
1.) Nutrition is vastly complicated and I do not pretend to know a fraction of what a nutritionist knows, I'm just sharing what works for me.

And a few final thoughts from me too sir: Despite me not agreeing with you, please understand that there's a lot of misinformation out there regarding fitness and nutrition. I'm not attacking you personally, I just find your information to be quite out of date and I'm posting so that you don't continue to misinform people. If I spew any misinformation I expect to be corrected and when done so I'll absolutely look into opposing arguments and change my stance when it calls for it.

To use an analogy, if I were to tell someone they could eat at a deficit, lift weights, wear a red hat, and consume adequate macro and micronutrients and in doing so they would successfully improve body composition and health markers, I would be correct and I could say that this worked for me. But they don't need the red hat, and they might not like wearing it.

Multiply that logic x 1000 and you end up with people doing all sorts of crap they don't have to do. It's complicated enough as is so it's best to get people straightened out, at least to some degree.

3.) Try not to combine fats & complex carbs. Both are turned into energy (fat) by your body and the combination will pack on the pounds. A perfect example is a PB&J sandwich…which is considered to be one of the worse sandwiches in the world…same with Mac & Cheese…both high fat and high carbs.

Food combination is completely bogus and has no scientific backing whatsoever. It literally makes no difference how you combine your macronutrients.

Here are some good sources for you:

www.alanaragon.com
www.bodyrecomposition.com
www.weightology.net
www.body-improvements.com

These are reliable sources that use science as the foundation for their statements, not dietary myths. These people are either top-in-their-field nutritionists and/or people who train others for a living but the commonality you'll see here is that they do their research and don't rely on anecdote or "what's in the magazines" to fuel their knowledge of nutrition.

The real key to losing weight is Metabolism!!


METABOLISM:
definition: Metabolism is the process that converts the food you eat into energy to support life.

There are diets and then there are “diets.” But the real key to LASTING weight loss is making a lifestyle change and doing smart things to speed up how effective your body is in burning off calories AND to keep that calorie burning machine operating at full capacity for as many hours per day as possible.

Here are some easy ways to do it naturally:

1.) Breakfast IS Important:

Why is breakfast soooo important? Your body is naturally programmed to conserve as much fat (energy) as possible when it is not being fed trying to protect vital organs and lean muscle tissue. When you are sleeping at night, so is your metabolism. Starting your metabolism as soon as you wake-up is vastly important. If you are like most Americans, you wake-up, brush your teeth and hit the coffee pot...with food no more than an after-thought a few hours later. Doing this can keeps your metabolism running slow for 10-12hrs/day. Subsequently, eating that first meal is crucial.

Suggestion:
- Minimum: grab a small handful of Nuts and have w/ your coffee; a Boiled egg; a small Low-fat/Low-sugar Yogurt; small piece of Fruit; etc.
- Ideal: Egg whites; Oatmeal (not instant); high fiber cereal;

Furthermore, after you eat your metabolism increases due to something called the thermic effect of food. Thermogenesis is the process of how your body increases heat to burn calories.


2.) Frequency of Eating:

The typical American diet is to skip breakfast, grab a decent lunch, over-eat at supper and snack at night. BAD IDEA!! To promote your body's metabolism, you should eat 5-6-7 times small meals per day. The effect on your body/metabolism by eating often keeps your metabolism running in high-gear. If you're lucky, it will never get into a "preservation" mood and start storing fat unless you are simply over-eating. Combined with moderate exercise, you will burn-off the calories you are consuming.

Frequent eating will raise your metabolism naturally...BUT DO NOT go super-size your meals! As mentioned, digesting food takes energy (i.e., burning calories). So, eating several meals per day, as opposed to 3-squares, raises your metabolism 5 to 6 times a day. Remember...when your body doesn't get food, your metabolism slows down. This is because our bodies are ingeniously programmed to protect against starvation...when your body senses that another meal may not be coming (even though food in our modern world is in abundance) it holds onto your body fat to use as energy.

Of course, to lose weight you will need to make smart choices of what you eat...which means...if you want Cupcakes, have a Cupcake...if you want a Hardee's Six Dollar Burger...have a Six Dollar Burger. But the key here is "Portion Control." For example, just have one cupcake and the burger, cut it in half, eat 1/2 now and the other half 3-4hrs later. Easy!!

An added benefit of eating every three hours is that you don't get hungry. By never getting hungry, you reduce the chances of overeating, or grabbing something quick and unhealthy just because it's there. If you get to the point of “starving”…then you’ve waited too late. You metabolism has slowed down conserving as much fat as possible…and more important, when you eat after “starving,” you body will immediately convert the consumed calories to fat. Not good.

Suggestion: Prepare your meals in advance…this helps you think through your food choices without being tempted to make bad choices.

3.) Exercise:

a.) Regular cardio raises your metabolism while you're doing it, but once your finished the exercise, your metabolism immediately returns to its regular rate. On the other hand, doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio raises your metabolism for hours afterward.

HIIT is performed by alternating highly intense bursts of exercise for 30 seconds to a minute ("highly intense" - not less than 85% of your maximum heart rate) with slow recovery for one to two minutes. I personally like the “Sprint 8” HIIT work-out. I do wind sprints for 80-meters and walk (rest) back to the starting line and do the next one until I get to eight. You can do the HIIT work-out on any regular cardio machine such as a treadmill, stairmaster, elliptical, etc. The key here is that sudden burst of energy raising your heart rate to 85% capacity and letting it fall back down. The perk of the HIIT program is it doesn’t take much time. With warm-up and cool-down, you can easily do the whole work-out in 20-minutes…as opposed to 45-60minutes on a treadmill.

b.) Like HIIT, lifting weights raises your metabolism long after you're finished...experts’ estimate that your metabolism stays elevated for up to 39 hours! And again like HIIT, your weight lifting program can and should be completed in no more than 45-minutes. Remember, the key word here is INTENSE, that means no 1-2 minute breaks between sets or exercises. My personal goal is a 15-second break between sets and no more than a 45-second break between exercises. Moreover, exercise physiologists have proven the first 45-minutes of exercise your body uses testosterone to fuel itself; whereas, after 45-minutes, it fuels itself with adrenaline. Testosterone builds muscle and increases metabolism; adrenaline does neither.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to understand...muscles consume calories naturally; therefore, the more muscle you have, the more calories you are going to burn even while resting. Fat does nothing to burn calories.

4.) Drink Lots of H2O:

I can't emphasize this enough, water is very important to your overall fitness, health and weight-loss quest. There are so many benefits to drinking lots of water I won't even attempt to mention them here. I will say that you should be drinking at least 4-liters/day. Plus, it will make you feel full.


A few final thoughts:
1.) Nutrition is vastly complicated and I do not pretend to know a fraction of what a nutritionist knows, I'm just sharing what works for me.

2.) Not all calories are equal…well sorta. Calories from Carbs is different from calories from protein which are different from calories from fat. I suggest determining how many of each group (Protein, Carbs, Fat) you need to consume per day to support your goal.

3.) Try not to combine fats & complex carbs. Both are turned into energy (fat) by your body and the combination will pack on the pounds. A perfect example is a PB&J sandwich…which is considered to be one of the worse sandwiches in the world…same with Mac & Cheese…both high fat and high carbs.

4.) Good fats such as Olive Oil are not processed the same as bad fats like butter, margarine.

5.) My personal fav suggestion is, “eat as close to the food sources as possible whenever possible.” A great example are Deli Cut meats…they are “processed” meat with something holding them together to make them look like meat. Same w/ butter…if you want butter have butter but DO NOT eat margarine which is little more than a chemical concoction made to sorta taste like butter…same with American cheese…it is cheese in name only.


SOURCE REFERENCE:

Proteins
* Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast
* Tuna (Water Packed)
* Fish (Salmon, Sea Bass, Halibut)
* Shrimp
* Extra Lean Ground Beef
* Protein Powder
* Egg Whites or Eggs
* Rib-Eye Steaks Or Roast
* Top Round Steaks Or Roast
* Top Sirloin
* Beef Tenderloin
* Top Loin
* Flank Steak
* Eye of Round
* Ground Turkey, Turkey Breast Slices Or Cutlets (Fresh Meat, Not Deli Cuts)


Complex Carbs
* Oatmeal
* Sweet Potatoes Or Yams
* Beans (Pinto, Black, Kidney)
* Oat Bran Cereal
* Brown Rice
* Farina (Cream of Wheat)
* Multigrain Hot Cereal (Oat Bran #1)
* Whole Wheat Pasta
* Rice (Brown, Jasmine, Basmati, Arborio, Wild)
* Potatoes (Red, Baking, New)


Fibrous Carbs
* Green Leafy Lettuce (Green Leaf, Red, Leaf, Romaine)
* Broccoli (best)
* Asparagus
* String Beans
* Spinach
* Bell Peppers
* Brussels Sprouts
* Cauliflower
* Celery

Other Produce & Fruits
* Cucumber
* Green Or Red Pepper
* Onions
* Garlic
* Tomatoes
* Zucchini
* Fruit (If acceptable on diet: Bananas, Apples, Grapefruit, Peaches, Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries)
* Lemons or Limes

Healthy Fats
* Natural Style Peanut Butter (home made is easy too) Or Almond Butter
* Extra Virgin Olive Oil (BEST), Olive Oil (better) Sunflower Oil, Almond Oil (good), Flaxseed Oil (good)
* Nuts (Peanuts, Almonds, Walnut)
* Canola, and Peanut - Monounsaturated Oils
* Sunflower, Corn, Soybean, and Cottonseed - Polyunsaturated Oils
* Omega-6
* Omega-3
* Fatty Coldwater Fish (Mackerel, Salmon, Bluefish, Mullet, Sablefish) - EPA and DHA
* More fish (Menhaden, Anchovy, Herring, Lake Trout, Sardines, Tuna) - EPA and DHA

Dairy & Eggs
* Low-Fat Cottage Cheese
* Eggs
* Low Or Non-Fat Milk

Water
* 4 Liters/day

Make sure you stay hydrated throughout the day. It is important to be drinking water not only during training, but before and after. Water helps flush out toxins in the body and will keep your body and organs functioning properly. I recommend taking in at least 1 gallon of water a day.


Good luck!!


http://www.facebook.com/fitwithfig