THE ULTIMATE BODY WEIGHT EXERCISE - BURPEE

Sounds like an aftermath of a full meal, eh? Actually burpee is a form of body weight exercise that recruits the most amount of muscle in a single exercise. If you recall from my earlier posts, I am a proponent of full body exercises or compound movements as opposed to isolation movements. An example of a compound movement is the squat. The squat recruits all the muscles of your legs (front and back) and your posterior chain (butt and lower back). Percentage wise it recruits almost 70% of your body’s muscles. On the other hand an isolation movement like the crunches only recruits the abdominal muscles which are about 15% of your body’s total muscles.


So here is a trivia for you: Which exercise do you think will burn more belly fat, the squat or the crunch? If you answered the crunch then you are wrong! Contrary to popular belief there is no spot reduction in the body, meaning no matter which body part you are exercising the body loses fat from the total body fat pool and not just from the part being exercised. So when you are doing crunches the body is losing fat from your arms and legs and other parts. Belly fat is the last place your body will lose fat from (and usually the first to gain). So if you want to burn belly fat stop doing crunches and start squatting! Now, compared to the squat the burpee recruits almost 90% of your body’s muscles, so it will be even more efficient at burning overall body fat (and belly fat). The burpee is a very simple but effective exercise for cardio and strength conditioning. It’s used extensively in the armed forces for building strength and endurance.

The way the burpee is performed is by starting with a standing position. First you drop down to a squat position and then bend forward and fall on your palms and kick your legs back. Then you perform a push up and as soon as the push up is done you bring back your legs under your chest and rise and perform a jumping squat. This one exercise alone will target your legs, butt, abdomen, chest, shoulders, triceps (the back of your arms) and partially your back. Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfNA_lmkHM

Start off by performing 20 of these in quick succession and it should take you less than 2-3 minutes to be done with the exercise. Slowly as your strength and endurance increases you will be able to add a few extra burpees every week. Burpees are the staple exercise in a lot of crossfit gyms across the country and the most I have ever seen anyone (myself included) do is 150. It takes about 15 minutes to do 150 of these and by the end you drop into a pool of your own sweat. It is by far more intense than any cardio exercise on the planet, in terms of building strength and endurance. And research has shown that short intense bursts of exercise are as effective as long duration low intensity cardio type exercises (http://www.naturalnews.com/024188_fitness_health_fat_loss.html). Considering the time savings of such an exercise plan, I'd say it’s a no brainer to do the high intensity type exercises. I mean why would you waste 2 hrs everyday on the treadmill when just 10-15 minutes three times a week will give you the same or more benefits?

So the next time you complain that you don’t have time and a gym membership to get in shape, stop making the excuses! All you need is 15 minutes, 3 times a week and a lot of determination and you’ll be in shape in no time. Want a 6 pack? No crunches required, just burpee!

FLAT BELLY DIET - INDIAN VERSION

I AM LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR MY WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM. I AM WORKING ON A BOOK FOR LOSING BELLY FAT AND WOULD LIKE 15-20 PEOPLE THAT WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT. YOUR WEIGHT LOSS EXPERIENCE WILL BE A PART OF THIS BOOK. SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME AT yogi4fitness@gmail.com. Now on to the article:

I am sure a lot of readers must have heard about the flat belly diet which promises to help you lose 15 lbs in a month. So what is the flat belly diet? And what can we Indians do to incorporate it in our eating plan so we can realize similar benefits. Well there is nothing secret about the flat belly diet. It’s based on sound eating principles and plain old common sense about what to eat at what times of the day. Here I am attempting to guide the readers on an Indian style flat belly diet that will make you shed belly fat. While I don’t claim that you’ll lose 15 lbs in a month, I can promise you that after the initial 3-4 days of insulin withdrawal symptoms that you will go through especially if you are used to eating high carb meals, your energy levels will sky rocket and depending on your starting weight you could realize up to 4-6 lbs of fat loss in a month.

In this plan I have divided the total meals into a 300 calorie average size portion with more calories consumed in the morning and less and less as the day goes on. A total of around 1600 calories will be consumed in 5 meals. Here is a sample meal plan (pick one of the options provided).

Breakfast:

•  One cup of oatmeal in whole milk topped with

o   Handful walnuts or almonds

o   Handful of blueberries or strawberries for sweetness.

• One toast spread with butter and a two egg omelet with a glass of tomato juice or coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).
• One whole wheat cauliflower or spinach (or any other vegetable except potato) paratha, pan fried in a small amount of butter with a glass of tomato juice or coffee/tea (lightly sweetened) and a handful of almonds or a whey protein drink.
• One cup of Upma with mixed vegetables and peanuts and two boiled eggs.
• Few Dhoklas (besan and semolina cakes) with 2 boiled eggs and coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).

Mid-morning snack:

• A handful of walnuts or almonds or an ounce of (60% or more) dark chocolate and a cup of coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).
• A pear or an apple or any other fruit (except mango, pineapple or cantaloupe) and a 8oz glass of whey protein drink.

Lunch:

• One whole wheat vegetable paratha light fried in butter with a bowl of daal and a serving of fruit.
• Two whole wheat rotis with cooked vegetables or beans (garbanzo, kidney, pinto or black-eyed) cooked in regular olive oil (never cook in virgin or extra virgin olive oil). 
• One cup brown rice with daal and a vegetable cooked in olive oil.

Mid-afternoon snack:

•  Same as the mid-morning snack.

Dinner:

•  A bowl of daal or chickpea soup with salad tossed in virgin olive oil.

•  A bowl of chaat made with:

o   Germinated green mung daal or black gram or a bowl of cooked chick peas lightly fried in olive oil with salt and pepper to taste.

o   Thin sev (made from gram flour not potatoes) sprinkled on top.

o   Finely chopped onions and green pepper.

o   Pudina or tamarind chutney (sweetened with splenda)

•  Plain salad with olive oil vinaigrette and topped with grated almonds or walnuts and boiled egg slices.

As you can see I have incorporated plenty of Mono-unsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA) in the form of nuts and olive oil. MUFA’s have been shown to aid in belly fat loss and are an easy source of energy for the body to convert. All other ingredients I have chosen based on their GI values. Try to stick with items in green in the table below (click to see) and stay away from the red zone especially after 6 PM because you are most likely to store the carbs from those items as fat.

Eat breakfast within an hour or so of waking up as it’s the most important meal of the day to rev up your metabolism. Skipping breakfast will slow down your metabolism and make your body store fat.  Space out all the meals by 2 hrs or so and never go beyond 3 hrs without eating something healthy. Finish your dinner at least 3 hrs before bed time and if you find yourself hungry at bed time, have a handful of almonds or roasted peanuts. And finally drink plenty of water and keep yourself hydrated.

Please realize that this is only a sample meal plan and it’s possible to create countless combinations of healthy recipes from the table provided above. Although I have nothing against eating meat I have stayed away from any meats in this sample plan just because a lot of Indians are vegetarians. You can always substitute a bowl of daal or roti with a fillet of salmon or chicken breast. Meat has no carbs and so eaten by itself meat cannot promote weight gain. This is why Atkins works for people that want to lose weight fast. Although I have nothing against Atkins, I don’t think it’s a balanced way to eat. We need to have healthy portions of carbs from high quality (low GI) sources like fruits and vegetables to get all our antioxidants and vitamins. By the same token we need about 30-35% of our calorie intake from healthy fats (MUFA) so instead of avoiding carbs or fat it’s best to balance them as I have proposed in this plan. Protein is essential because it helps us preserve muscle mass which in turn keeps our metabolism high. It also helps our body regenerate from the daily wear and tear. Also protein and healthy fat in diet hinder the assimilation of glucose in the blood and slow the glucose to fat conversion mechanism.  Exercise is optional in this plan but will help you shed fat faster if you do choose to exercise.

On a final note, I would love to have volunteers for this diet plan and will work with you and guide you in planning alternative substitutes based on your taste. Please contact me at yogi4fitness@gmail.com if you want to volunteer. If not I would still love to hear comments based on your experience with this diet plan.

KIDS NUTRITION

I get quite a few calls on the show from parents that are worried about their kids being skinny and not liking any sweets and/or not eating a certain nutritious things. Here I would like to shed some light on kid’s nutrition. First and foremost, I would urge parents to shy away from low fat diets for the kids especially if they are cutting down on the essential fatty acids that are present in nuts, seafood and even dairy. I hear parents giving skim milk to their kid which is the worst thing you can do to a kid’s growing brain. The working surface of the brain is composed mainly of fatty acids and the protective Myelin sheath surrounding the neurons is 30% protein and 70% fat. This protective sheath is crucial for the longevity of the neurons because unlike the rest of the body cells the brain and neuron cells don’t regenerate. Studies of the ancient human fossils have found that the populations living near the oceans had a larger brain compared to the populations living inland. This was attributed to the diet of the costal people mainly consisting of seafood and shell fish both of which are high in DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and cholesterol. DHA is the essential building block of brain cells and mothers milk is rich in this essential fatty acid and it has been shown time and again that a baby fed on mothers milk has a higher IQ than a formula fed baby. Although DHA is abundant in seafood but it can be made in our brains from ALA (Alpha-linolenic acid) family of fats found in the omega-3 containing food groups like flax, walnuts, almonds and green leafy vegetables. So in a nut shell give your kids nuts, seafood, green leafy vegetables and whole milk for optimum brain development.

As far as kids being skinny, I would say one need not worry about the weight as it’s mostly genetic at that age and as long as the kid is otherwise healthy and active and has a robust immunity there is no cause for worry. So if your kid is on the skinny side, don’t worry after a certain age he will start putting on more weight as his metabolism slows down. I know this is hard to digest being Indians as we often equate chubbiness to health. But remember obesity in kids is on the rise, thanks to high-fructose corn syrup in most soft drinks, candy bars and cereals. And if your kid doesn’t enjoy fruits because they are sweet try giving him more vegetables as they are also rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants and if you are still worried then giving them a kids multi-vitamin pill everyday is a good idea.

GOOD LINK ON CHRONIC INFLAMMATION

Here is some good information on inflammation:

http://www.womentowomen.com/inflammation/default.aspx

While some inflammation is necessary in the body to invoke its immune response, a constant inflammation in the body at several levels has been linked to arthritis, allergic reactions and most recently to coronary heart disease. By incorporating a healthy lifestyle with exercise, good diet and plenty of rest, we can change the state of inflammation in our bodies and enjoy a long disease free life. Happy reading!

CORONARY HEART DISEASE: THE REAL CAUSE

Whenever someone speaks of coronary heart disease (CHD) people think of cholesterol. In the past decade or so people have become more conscious of the so called evils of cholesterol and even though on an average people’s cholesterol levels are declining thanks to the consumption of billions of dollars of statin drugs, the rate of heart disease is still on the rise.  Baffling isn’t it? Also half the number of people that die of a heart attack have either normal or low cholesterol. Again baffling? Studies all across the globe of dietary habits of the Italian (predominant cheese eaters), French (cheese and organ meat eaters) and most tribes in Africa (beef eaters) haven’t been able to correlate the intake of dietary cholesterol with the incidence of heart disease. Baffled again?  The consumption of saturated animal fats since WW II has fallen steadily, thanks to the low fat crusade and yet the rates of CHD have risen dramatically. Baffled yet again? So obviously something is wrong with the hypothesis (yes it’s only a hypothesis because it’s never been conclusively proven to any statistical significance) that saturated fat or cholesterol cause CHD. So what does cause CHD? What causes the plaque formation in the arteries if cholesterol isn’t the cause?

To understand this we’ll have to dig deeper into the mechanism of plaque formation. While cholesterol does deposit on the artery walls to form plaque, the mechanism and the reason behind it is a bit more complex. Just the simplistic assumption that high cholesterol in one’s blood leads to more plaque formation and vice versa is not true. The blood vessels are constantly bombarded by free radicals and other oxidizing agents in the blood. This causes inflammation in the micro capillaries that if not controlled would cause a micro pore or a lesion in the wall. This will cause blood to leak out of the artery if the lesion opens up. When a lesion like this forms on the artery wall the role of protein is to repair and regenerate the wall so the leak can be plugged, but in the case of diabetics and people that eat too many simple carbs, the excess blood glucose floating around binds to protein and doesn’t let it do its job of repairing the lesion. The body’s next line of defense is to deposit some cholesterol on the lesion as a stopgap or band-aid. But it doesn’t stop here since the integrity of the capillary is compromised at that location, the next free radical attack happens preferentially at the same site over and over again. Even though I have simplistically described this process in discrete steps, it happens continuously in our blood vessels, 24/7. Over a period of several years this little inflammation band-aid plug grows and grows until it forms hardened plaque that eventually ruptures and causes a complete clog and stroke.

So we can see that the real reason for the formation of this plaque is not cholesterol but the inflammation that is happening in our arteries and our body’s inefficiency to repair it. So in essence cholesterol is just a symptom of an underlying problem and not the problem in itself. To give an analogy it would be silly to label a certain part of the town, which has a lot of police on patrol, as bad and as an area of high crime rate. The police are not the cause of the high crime rate but rather a result of the high crime rate in that area. Similarly the presence of cholesterol as plaque is not the cause of the hardening of arteries but rather the result of inflammation in the arteries. So as long as you have inflammation in your arteries you will form a plaque no matter what your cholesterol levels are. This explains the other half of the puzzle with people dying of heart attack in spite of their normal or low cholesterol levels.

In order to address the problem of plaque formation one needs to address the root cause of inflammation.  Inflammation is caused by free radicals and oxidative agents in our blood and if we can reduce the intake and formation of these free radicals then we would prevent the inflammation in the first place. Some of the obvious things that cause inflammation are most synthetic food agents, trans-fats, food fried in vegetable oils (frying in saturated fat or coconut oil is best). Also people that are diabetic and people on a high GI carb diet are pro-inflammatory as their protein repair mechanisms are impaired. Also people with stress have been shown to have higher levels of inflammation in their bodies. Smoking is another high risk practice that constricts and hardens blood vessels and increases the likelihood of plaque formation.

So my advice is to consume plenty of anti oxidants to counteract the free radicals. Fruits are high in anti-oxidant content but be careful to watch out the GI of some of the fruits like pineapples that are also high in sugar. Also the omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and olive oil is a strong inflammation antagonist. So have plenty of it. Mono-unsaturated fat found in nuts and certain vegetables like avocados are also anti inflammatory. And lastly stay away from deep fried things that are fried in vegetable shortening, margarine or even plain vegetable oils as they either have free radicals in them or release free radicals at temperatures required for frying. If you have to fry something, try butter, ghee or coconut oil as saturated fats are stable at high temperatures and don’t oxidize. And lastly remember to keep your weight under control by eating small frequent meals of low GI foods. This way you can keep your sugar levels and hence insulin levels in check and that way you will ensure that any inflammation in the body is repaired with proteins. This way you will avoid developing type II diabetes which the research community is fast finding out to be the real cause of heart disease. A high carb low fat diet with a stressful lifestyle is a surefire way to develop CHD even if you never go near saturated fat and have record low cholesterol levels. Keep in mind though that if your cholesterol levels are rising from year to year then it’s a symptom of some underlying inflammation in your body. Doctors are now looking for markers of inflammation in the blood like C-reactive protein (CRP) that is a better predictor for the risk of CHD than cholesterol. So be sure to ask your doctor to check your CRP levels the next time you have blood work done. And lastly to all my smoking friends out there, please stop smoking ASAP if you love your friends and family.

VEGETARIANISM VS, NON-VEGETARIANISM

Following my shoulder injury and surgery, I switched to a vegetarian diet consisting of dairy, eggs, vegetables and fruits for about 8 months. Every time I refused to eat meat at a gathering I would be asked two questions? Did you switch because a vegetarian diet is healthier? And did you switch to a vegetarian diet for weight loss? My answer to both would be, no!

Based on my literature search on carbohydrates and weight gain, I would expect neither would apply to a vegetarian diet, i.e., a vegetarian diet would neither be more healthy nor be less fattening than an omnivorous (meat and vegetable) diet. Even looking at the demographics of obesity and diabetes it’s hard to come to such a conclusion. For example the Indian subcontinent has the highest concentration of vegetarians in the world and yet at the same time they have the highest concentration of type II diabetes and the fastest growing obesity trend. So why has this notion that a vegetarian diet is healthier and less fattening than a comparable calorie omnivorous diet perpetuated throughout the western world? In the following discussion I plan on dispelling this myth along with evidence that an omnivorous diet is as healthy if not more, than a vegetarian diet and in fact an omnivorous diet incorporating fish is even superior to an all vegetarian diet in terms of overall mortality from heart disease and other factors.

We have to understand some of the motivational background for vegetarianism in the east vs. the west. In India for example, most Hindus, Buddhists and Jains are vegetarian by religion as animal slaughter is considered inhumane. In contrast to that, people in the industrialized nations of the west are vegetarian by lifestyle choice mostly motivated by a desire for good health (again perpetuated by the notion that vegetarianism is somehow healthier). So in studies (mostly done in the west) on the health merits of vegetarianism, the vegetarian group is already practicing a healthy lifestyle in terms of regular exercise, not smoking and not drinking alcohol and watching what they eat. That is the most fundamental flaw in these studies because one group of the control population is already working towards biasing the result in a direction that the study intends to find. In a controlled clinical trail, say for example, the trial for a new drug to lower blood sugar. There would be a control group that will be given the sugar pill and there will be a second group that will be given the trial drug. But what if the trial drug group was already working on an exercise plan to lower weight and hence the blood sugar? Would you call such a study fair? I think not! I would bet my farm (if I had one) that the results would be in favor of the trial drug group even if that drug did absolutely nothing. So keeping that in mind let’s look at what research has been done to correlate health to a particular type of diet.

There are 5 famous studies ^{[1, 2, 3]} done all the way back from 1982 up until now where 8,300 deaths were analyzed among 76,000 men and women with respect to their diet. Frequent meat eaters were defined as people that ate meat more than once a week and occasional meat eaters were defined as those eating less than once a week and furthermore another category in the meat eaters was the fish eaters that didn’t eat any meat except fish. The vegetarians were sub divided into the vegetarians that also ate eggs and dairy and vegans that ate no animal products. I am not going to go into the details of how the study was performed or how the data was analyzed but readers are welcome to go through the references if they are statistically inclined. The distribution of the subjects sampled is summarized in table 1 below.

Table 1. The distribution of sampled subjects with respect to lifestyle and dietary habits.

The first thing that strikes us is that the vegetarians in all the studies were following a healthier lifestyle compared to the non-vegetarians. The vegetarians smoked considerably less, drank considerably less alcohol and exercised more than the non-vegetarian population. The Body mass index (BMI) was similar in both groups so neither group was more obese than the other. The results are summarized in table 2 and graph 1 below.

Table 2. Percentage deaths in both groups from various causes.

Graph1. Graphical interpretation of table 1.

It’s worth noting that the number of vegans in the study is an order of magnitude lower than any of the other groups, so anyone that knows statistics would know that the results for this group are not as accurate as the other groups. For example there were no deaths from breast cancer or from prostate cancer in the vegan group but that should not be interpreted as something that is a benefit of the vegan diet. It just means that in the time period of these studies no one in the (small) vegan population died of these two factors. This doesn’t mean that if the sample population of vegans was as large as the other groups in this study there would still be no deaths from these factors.

The percentage of deaths from heart disease was similar in both the regular meat eaters and in the vegetarian and vegan group. The occasional meat eater’s percentage was slightly higher. The non-vegetarians that ate fish had the lowest heart disease deaths. There was no statistically significant difference between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or all other causes combined. The fish eaters were the ones that fared the best in almost all the categories. The regular meat eaters and the vegetarians fared comparably in almost all the categories except lung cancer but remember the meat eaters were smoking considerably more than the vegetarians.

Final thoughts:

The general trend is that meat eaters eat too little vegetables and get too little fiber and also consume alcohol and smoke, where as vegetarians are more health conscious and so exercise regularly and watch what they eat. I believe that a healthy diet has to have a balance between animal sources of food and plant sources of food. The caveman diet, or the Paleolithic diet, that consists of vegetables, fruits, nuts and organic meats is the healthiest diet and that is the diet that the humans have evolved with for hundreds of thousands of years before the modern grain diet was invented few thousand years ago. If you are averse to eating meat then more power to you but do realize that being a vegetarian doesn’t offer any health benefits over an omnivorous diet. In fact a diet predominant in grains without much fruit or vegetables might be worse than a meat and vegetable diet due to the GI value of the diet and the resultant weight gain and the health problems that come with weight gain. And if you are not averse to eating meat than incorporating 2-3 servings of fish a week along with vegetables and fruits will be even better than an all vegetarian diet for both weight loss and general health.

So the next time you see a person tout a vegetarian diet ask them if they are doing it for good health or weight loss.

References:

1. Animal product consumption and mortality because of all causes combined, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer in Seventh-day Adventists. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1988; 48(suppl):739–48.
2. Vegetarianism, dietary fiber, and mortality. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1982; 36:873–7.
3. Chronic disease among Seventh-day Adventists, a low-risk group. Cancer 1989; 64:570–81.
4. 3)Mortality among German vegetarians: first results after five years of follow-up. Nutr Cancer 1988; 11:117–26.
5. The GLIM system release 4 manual. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1993.
6. Mortality pattern of German vegetarians after 11 years of follow-up. Epidemiology 1992; 3:395–401.