Nutrition 101

For many people the hardest part of achieving their fitness goal is understanding diet and nutrition.

Given the magnitude of options, information, and suggestions we are exposed to on a daily basis this shouldn’t be surprising. Typically the best thing to do is break the basic information down into “bite size” pieces. 

Before you start trying to figure out what to eat it might help to have a good understanding of where you’re at in the first place.

Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)

There are some simple and relatively accurate formulas to figure out what your daily calories should be based on your weight and activity level. The first thing you want to figure out is your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). This is the number of calories that your body is burning before any physical activity. Basically this is what your body burns to keep itself running and functioning, and the equation is body weight times 10. So if you weigh 180 pounds then your RMR is 1800. From here you now want to factor in the activity level of your lifestyle in order to determine how many calories you would need to consume in order to keep your present weight. 

If you lead a sedentary life and spend most of your time sitting at a desk then you would multiply your RMR by 1.2. If you exercise occasionally, maybe once or twice a week, multiply your RMR by 1.3. If you exercise regularly every week, say 2 to 4 times, then multiply your RMR by 1.4, and if you exercise regularly every week up to 5 times then multiply by 1.5. So let’s say your RMR is 1800 and you’re sitting at a desk all day with no exercise. The calories you would need to consume in order to maintain your weight would be 2160 (1800x1.2). Typically a person’s goal is weight loss so the effort from here would be to put yourself in a calorie deficit in relation to this number. And a calorie deficit is exactly what it sounds like: setting your calorie intake to below the amount your body needs to maintain its current weight. As we discuss caloric deficit and how that breaks down it is important to note that the minimum calorie recommendation per day for men is 1800 calories and the minimum for women is 1500. It is thought that much below this is unsafe and should be monitored by a doctor.

Obviously these numbers are only relevant if you begin tracking what you eat, so pick your favorite food tracking app and give it a try. My suggestion would be to simply track what you normally eat for a few days so you can take the calorie number the app is telling you and compare it to the number you got from your equations based on your personal weight and activity level. Are you in the basic range of what you would eat to keep your present body weight? Or are you significantly over that number, meaning that your body weight is steadily increasing? This is important information to have in order to get an understanding of what type of changes are going to be required of you in order to take control of your body composition. If your goal is weight loss then you are going to want your daily intake of calories to be under the total calories that you got from multiplying your RMR by your activity level. 

An example of How to figure out your daily calories.

Say your RMR is 1800 and you have a sedentary lifestyle which registers as a 1.2 on the activity scale, giving you your weight maintenance calorie intake of 2160. Now let’s say that after 1 week of tracking your meals, snacks, and other sources of calories (yes, alcohol counts) you discover that your average daily calories is around 2400. Your goal at this point is pretty straightforward: get your daily caloric intake down below 2160. As I mentioned before, men can safely reduce their daily calories to 1800 and women can safely reduce their daily calories to 1500. Now comes the hard part. Remember, I only said what you needed to do was straightforward, I never said accomplishing it was easy. But here are some tips that can help.

Portion control is always a useful tool.

People tend to eat more than they realize, leading to a higher calorie count. Simply watching the size of the portions you put on your plate can have a huge impact on reducing calories. Maybe even try using a smaller plate so less food fits on it.

 My next recommendation is something I can’t stress enough.

Read the nutrition label on the back of the foods you buy and learn what it means.

This is an invaluable tool and it’s absolutely free. The three main things you need in your meals are protein, carbs, and fats. And where they come from can play a huge role in weight management. Opting for lean protein will help reduce your fat consumption, because while you need fats, you don’t need a lot of them if you’re looking to lose weight. So stick with chicken breast, lean turkey, egg whites with maybe just one yoke, and other sources of protein that keep the fat content to a minimum. And speaking of fats, try to have your sources of fat come from things that offer additional benefits, like certain vitamins and nutrients. Different types of nuts are great sources of fat but also magnesium and other vital nutrients. Sunflower butter and peanut butter fall into these categories. Just be careful of the serving size and be aware of what that translates into for your fat intake. Avocados and beans are another great source for fat but there’s a catch, especially with beans. Beans also contain a decent amount of carbs, so you have to be sure that you’re calculating the protein, fat, and the carbs that you’re getting from a serving of beans. This is where using a food tracking app comes in handy, it will do all that work for you.

Since you could write an entire book about diet and nutrition, and many have been, I’ll wrap it up here, and leave you with this. Veggies are carbs, but they only contain a small amount, therefore you can eat a lot of veggies to help hit your carb levels. This will help you accomplish two things: the first is you will be more full and less likely to feel hungry because you can eat more veggies, and second, veggies do not have a lot of calories, so it won’t push you over your calorie goals when you eat a lot of them. For a flip side example, a regular portion of pasta has a sizable amount of carbs as well as calories, therefore you can’t eat as much without risking going over your daily calorie and carb goals, which might leave you feeling hungry later. Veggies give you healthy carbs and nutrients and won’t break the bank on your calorie intake.

It’s important to remember, weight loss is not an exact science and it might take time to figure out what works for you. The goal is to create a healthy relationship with food and to understand your body better and what fuels it to perform and feel its best. But as long as you can keep yourself in a calorie deficit and focus on what and how much you put in your body, this should be a very reliable method for weight loss. But ultimately, any nutrition plan should be practical and doable. In other words, if it isn’t something that you’re going to be able to maintain then you have to come up with a plan that you can maintain. You don’t have to give up all the foods you like eating, but being more responsible and better informed on basic nutrition can go a long way. Feel free to contact us with any questions!

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What Is Corrective Exercise?

We use the term “Corrective Exercise” pretty regularly and promote its importance and value. But like with a lot of commonly used terms this one shouldn’t become a catch-all phrase that no one really knows the meaning of. Because in fact it’s quite straightforward.

If I had to summarize corrective exercise in one sentence, I’d say it’s like doing physical therapy rehab for your whole body except you don’t need to injure yourself or have had surgery in order to start doing it.

The name can be slightly misleading since the word ‘exercise’ typically leaves the impression of doing something that’s active and requires a lot of effort and movement. While this can sometimes be the case in later stages of Corrective Exercise in order to reorient the worked on muscles to the rest of the muscular system, the usual structure of Corrective Exercise is generally slow, controlled, deliberate movements intended to affect a specific muscle or small group of muscles.

These days a lot of us have occupations that require us to sit for long periods, often in front of a computer, with our heads sticking out like a turtle toward the screen and our shoulders rounding forward and down toward the key board. Or maybe it’s the complete opposite, and you have to stand most of the day, either in front of a computer, a spreadsheet, or moving from one workstation to the next. Either way, repetitive movement can reek havoc on the body. People sitting for long periods end up with neck and shoulder pain, low back pain, and probably hip pain. People standing for long periods also end up with hip pain, and you can probably add in knee and foot pain as well. Technology may make our lives easier, but it certainly doesn’t help us maintain the physically functional levels that our bodies are intended for.

And this is where the problem can start. With the intention of staying healthy and active, we go to the gym, or take a fitness class, ride a bike or follow along to an exercise video at home. While these are great intentions, most of us are entering into these activities still carrying the effects of our job’s physical demands. Pain is not some arbitrary sensation that can be ignored because you don’t want it, or avoided if you just don’t do certain things. There is a reason why your hip, or knee, or back, or shoulder or whatever hurts. Sitting and standing for long periods affects our muscles and puts excessive demand on other muscles not meant for it. This is where Corrective Exercise becomes extremely beneficial.

If you know that sitting for long periods causes a shortening of hip flexor and hamstring muscles and deactivates your glutes, and that poor posture and weakened core muscles put strain on your lower back, then it should be logical that correcting those muscle imbalances is of paramount importance. If you don’t then your exercise routine is basically just grinding away at those same muscles that are under strain already, usually making the pain worse and eventually leading to injury. Corrective exercise uses a two part approach; the first is to understand your daily patterns to predict where you’re most likely to be tight, weakened, and under or over active, and the second is to actually observe your basic movements to confirm the predictions and figure out how limited or severe the situation may be.

From here the goal of Corrective Exercise is to help restore functional muscle movements by lengthening shortened muscles, strengthening weakened muscles, and educating on the circumstances that created this problem in order to stay healthy and prevent it from happening again. In a lot of ways it can be compared to the use of physical therapy after surgery or a serious injury. Muscles that have been injured or have ceased their intended function due to lack of use are worked on until proper strength levels are achieved and pain is eliminated and full functional movement has been restored.

Send us an email with any questions and sign up for a free consultation! Thanks for reading!

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Intro To Running

Going for a run is one of the most common forms of exercise.

Whether it’s for stress relief, weight loss, competition or just enjoyment, we have friends, family, and clients that run on a regular basis. So we thought we’d offer some insight on how to approach running and ways to avoid injury so you can get the most out of your run, no matter what inspires you.

One of the main things we want to impress upon you is the fact that everyone is or has the potential to be a natural born runner. But running has to be treated like any other physical activity, you have to train for it. If you’re someone who goes running periodically, meaning you take months off at a time, and in between you randomly go for an aggressive 3 mile run, then it shouldn’t surprise you when your feet and shins hurt the next day and your hips feel like they’re locked in a vice. If you hadn’t done bench press for 2 months I doubt you would go into the gym and attempt your last PR. And if you did you’d be paying for it. So running is no different. If you want to be a healthy runner you need to put in the time to practice and prepare your body for the demands you are asking of it. This includes taking time in the beginning to acclimate your body and giving it time to get strong enough to handle the 3 or 5+ mile run you might just be casually trying to do every few weeks or couple of months right now.

But regardless of whether you are a casual runner or someone who starts every day with a morning run, we want to offer some tips for keeping those joints working smoothly and those muscles operating at their optimal capacity.

If you break down the movement of running it’s pretty straightforward: it’s the constant flexion and extension of multiple joints while balancing from foot to foot. It may not feel that way when you’re moving so quickly through the motion but feet, ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders are all repeatedly flexing and extending. In order to meet the demands of this locomotion it helps to prep your body and check the mobility of each of these joints. A great way to check this is by performing a bodyweight squat. This will test your ability to comfortably flex and extend both your hips and knees, as well as test the flexion of your ankles, which is referred to as dorsiflexion.

Some questions to ask yourself.

Can you comfortably perform a proper squat? Are you able to maintain hip tension and stability through the entire range of the squat? Are you able to maintain balance and keep your whole foot on the ground with center of gravity in the front of the heel and an arch in the middle? Being able to do this will ensure that all of your energy is being spent on an effective run, and not wasted on trying to keep your balance or hold yourself up due to a lack of range of motion or hip drive.

With regard to mobility the last two things you want to consider are back tension and your ability to have proper shoulder extension. Sitting all day often leads to low and mid back tension and poor posture, which can easily affect your ability to rotate through the trunk and create core stability while running. This will most likely reveal itself with pain or stiffness in the low and mid back as you run.

While performing a dozen or so squats is a great way to warm up and check your mobility, also consider adding in a couple minutes of jump rope. This will get your feet and ankles ready for your run, warm up your balance, and give you a chance to engage your back and lats for good posture, as well as working on maintaining a neutral hip position with engaged glutes. Once you know your glutes are fired up and you have good mobility through your joints, do several short distant sprints and jogs to get everything primed and ready, and then start your run.

In no way is this a comprehensive list of all the things you should or need to be doing. It is more of a guideline as to how you should be thinking about running and how you approach getting yourself in the healthiest physical state to have successful and pain free runs. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or set up a consultation to discuss any particular obstacles or issues you might need help with. Thanks for reading!

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