In this video Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald dispels the myth that eating frequently boosts your metabolism, but explains how consuming small meals throughout the day tends to reduce your appetite, thus allowing you to stay lean and perform well.

RELATED: Five Tips For Training Your Tummy

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Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald tells us how to compensate for the effect of training on our appetite.

MORE: Why Counting Calories Makes Sense

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Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald explains how cutting wasteful beverage calories from your diet is one of the easiest and most effective ways to manage your overall caloric intake and get lean for peak performance.

RELATED: Are sports drinks making you fat?

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Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald says it’s okay to gain a little weight–a little–in the off-season.

More Racing Weight: The Benefits Of Eating A Big Breakfast

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In this video Matt Fitzgerald, author of Racing Weight, explains how focusing on eating good stuff, instead of not eating bad stuff, will help limit the amount of junk you consume.

More Racing Weight: The Benefits Of Eating A Big Breakfast

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In this video Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald discusses the importance of breakfast in an endurance athlete’s diet. Studies have shown that athletes who eat a substantial breakfast tend to be leaner than those who typically skip it.

More Racing Weight: Why Calorie Counting Makes Sense

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In this video, Matt Fitzgerald, nutrition expert and author of Racing Weight, discusses the pros, cons, whys and hows of counting calories for endurance athletes.

RELATED: Want to lose weight? Then get serious!

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Use these tips to balance holiday enjoyment with your needs as an athlete.

It’s often said that the average person gains five pounds during the six-week period from Thanksgiving week to New Year’s Day. Actually, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the average person gains only one pound over the holidays—but never loses it. So, for the typical American, 20 years of turkey dinners, office holiday parties, and New Year’s Eve toasts add up to 20 pounds of lard around the middle. You don’t want that!

RELATED: The Dos and Don’ts of Holiday Eating

The holiday season coincides with the off-season for most runners. Training is typically reduced at this time, which further increases the likelihood of weight gain. In fact, for the runner who enters the holiday/off-season at a very high level of fitness, a certain amount of weight gain is unavoidable. But what you want to avoid is the common problem of gaining entirely too much body fat at this time of year, which will sabotage your efforts to take your racing performance to a new level next year.

The five tips on the following pages will help you avoid excessive weight gain this holiday/off-season.

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Weight loss may never be as easy as taking a pill, but a few supplements can help you shed fat a bit more easily.

If any of the dozens of different kinds of weight-loss supplements on the market worked—I mean really worked—then two-thirds of American adults would not be overweight or obese. It’s that simple. When any type of supplement lives up to its promises, it does not remain a secret or a marginal product that consumers cycle on and off as wave after wave of suckers falls for the testimonials, fake science and celebrity endorsements, discovers it doesn’t do anything, and moves on.

That’s why nearly every weightlifter takes creatine. It works and everyone knows it. But as much as you might hope to discover some supplement out there that makes weight management easy, there is no creatine equivalent in the weight-loss market. In fact, the more you look to or rely on supplements for weight loss, the less likely it is that you will succeed in losing weight, not only because every product you try will fail to meet your expectations, but also because your “magic bullet” mentality will distract you from the measures that really work: eating healthy, training consistently, avoiding overeating, and so forth.

RELATED: 7 Supplements That Aren’t A Total Waste Of Money

That said, I do believe there are a few supplements that runners seeking weight loss should consider taking. It’s a short list, but some products can slightly enhance the results you get from the measures mentioned above in certain circumstances. These supplements are not magic bullets, nor are they necessary for the achievement of one’s ideal racing weight; however each is worth considering.

Calcium

Calcium plays a rule in regulating a hormone that influences body fat storage. Studies have shown that inadequate calcium intake increases the risk of overweight and that individuals who do not get enough calcium in their diet tend to lose weight when they increase their calcium intake. Adults should aim to get at least 1000 mg of calcium daily. Pregnant and postmenopausal women need 1500 mg.

Creatine

While it’s generally considered a muscle-building supplement and is mostly used by athletes in strength and speed sports, creatine can be useful to endurance athletes seeking to improve their body composition. Research has shown that creatine supplementation enhances improvements in body composition that result from weightlifting. So you might want to consider taking creatine at times when you are prioritizing strength building, as every runner should do during “off-season” breaks between race-focused training cycles.

Fiber

Fiber takes up space in the stomach and promotes satiety without actually contributing any calories to the body’s metabolism. Naturally high-fiber foods, such as vegetables, therefore provide more fullness per calorie than other foods. Men and women who maintain high-fiber diets tend to be leaner than those who don’t get much fiber.

Most American adults fail to meet their dietary fiber requirement of 14 grams per 1,000 calories. While it’s best to get all the fiber you need from whole foods, a fiber supplement is an acceptable way to make up for any shortfall. Studies have shown that fiber supplementation causes weight loss in obese individuals. It’s not likely to have such a large effect in the typical triathlete, but it may yield a small benefit.

Green Tea Extract

Green tea contains a class of antioxidants known as catechins that, among other effects, increase fat burning. Studies show that green tea extract slightly increases fat loss resulting from a reduced-calorie diet. This effect alone wouldn’t be sufficient to make supplementation worth considering for most triathletes, but since catechins have other benefits, including improved cardiovascular healthy, you might want to try a green tea extract supplement—or just start drinking green tea!

Whey Protein

Studies have shown that a high-protein diet, where roughly 30 percent of daily calories come from protein, promotes fat loss by reducing appetite. Getting 30 percent of your calories from protein is not easy without eating a lot of meat and/or fish unless you supplement. Whey protein supplements allow one to maintain a high-protein diet in a healthier and more calorie-efficient way than gorging on flesh all day.

A 30 percent protein diet is generally not advisable year-round for runners, because it necessarily limits carbohydrate intake, and a high-carbohydrate diet is needed to support heavy training loads. It’s best to increase protein intake to this level during the off-season, when endurance training is reduced.

****

About The Author:

Matt Fitzgerald is the author of Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen & The Greatest Race Ever Run (VeloPress 2011) and a Coach and Training Intelligence Specialist for PEAR Sports. Find out more at mattfizgerald.org.

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The point of getting leaner is to enhance race performance; getting lean is not an end in itself, advises Racing Weight author Matt Fitzgerald. In this video learn how proper training can help you get lean for peak performance.

More Racing Weight: The 8% Rule

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Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Dieters often dread the Monday weigh-in. On any other day they look forward to stepping on the bathroom scale in the morning. But Mondays are different. All too typically, Monday’s number is larger than Friday’s. A week’s worth of progress toward their body weight goal has been reversed over the weekend.

Studies confirm what dieters experience. A 2008 study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that men and women on a one-year weight-loss program lost weight during the workweek but not on weekends because they binged. While they succeeded in losing 8 percent of their body weight on average by the end of the year, it was estimated they would have lost almost twice as much weight if they had eaten consistently seven days a week.

The problem is not that we tend to eat more of the same foods on the weekends. Rather, we indulge in foods and drinks that we don’t consume during the week: buttered popcorn at the movie theater, a couple of cocktails with a heavy restaurant dinner, and so forth.

What makes runners and triathletes different from dieters is that they do a lot of exercise, and typically do the most exercise on Saturday and Sunday. Because they burn the most calories on the weekend, runners and triathletes often assume it’s OK for them to relax their normal dietary standards and eat whatever they feel like having. The catch is that it’s all too easy to overcompensate.

Suppose you normally run for 45 minutes on Wednesdays and 75 minutes on Saturdays. Those extra 30 minutes will burn an extra 300-400 calories, or thereabouts. Now suppose you reward yourself with a bowl of ice cream after lunch and two glasses of wine with dinner. Those indulges will add about 600 calories to your normal intake. Not good.

How can you avoid letting weekends sabotage your effort to attain your optimal racing weight? Two ways.

Be Aware

Weight management is a numbers game. To lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than your body burns each day. And to do that, it’s helpful to know how many calories you’re consuming and burning. Next weekend, use online food calorie resources such as Calorieking.com and online calorie burn calculators such as Caloriesperhour.com to determine if you are in fact taking in more calories than you’re burning over the weekend. If you are, make some adjusts to your food choices to put the totals in a more favorable balance.

Spread Out Your Treats

It’s not that you can’t have the occasional treat such as a bowl of ice cream or a glass of wine. You just need to avoid packing them all into two days of the week. Research shows that the most successful weight managers eat most consistently throughout the week. To improve your dietary consistency, follow the one-in-10 rule: Allow one of every 10 foods or beverages you consume to be whatever you want, whether it’s Wednesday or Saturday.

[sig:MattFitzgerald]

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Everyone knows it’s important to be lean if you want to run fast. But how important really is it?

Swiss exercise scientists recently focused their attention on 42 recreational female runners who participated in a half marathon. They quizzed the runners on their training habits and also took various anthropometric measurements and then attempted to correlate this data with their race finish times.

The researchers found that body fat percentage was among the best predictors of race finish times—an even better predictor than training volume. This finding isn’t too surprising. We all know that being lean is critical to running performance. We also know that fitness is critical to running performance, and as fitness goes up, body fat percentage tends to come down. Among recreational runners, there tend to be large differences in leanness, and it’s only to be expected that the leanest recreational runners will perform best in races.

Among elite-level runners it’s a different story. All elite runners are very lean, and the small differences in body fat percentages have little correlation with differences in performance. Within the special population of elite runners, it’s small differences in VO2max, maximum speed, and running economy that determine who wins and who loses.

Except that nothing I said in the previous paragraph is true. Believe it or not, differences in body fat percentage predict races times as well in elite runners as they do among recreational female runners. This was shown in a 2009 study involving 24 elite runners in Ethiopia. Skinfold measurements were used to estimate body fat percentage in 12 male and 12 female athletes. These estimates were then compared to the runners’ individual race performances. The researchers found an 80 percent correlation between skinfold measurements and race times in the men and a 78 percent correspondence in the women. All of these runners were very lean and very light, but the leanest among them were the fastest.

At every level of the sport, leanness is as important as aerobic capacity, speed, and running economy. And even at the elite level, it seems, some runners could get faster by getting leaner. A good case in point is Chris Solinsky, who made a quantum leap in performance last year when he broke the American record for 10,000m (26:59.60) and lowered his 5000m PR from 13:18.41 to 12:55.53. That leap coincided with a visible leaning out that was widely commented on at the time. While it’s impossible to separate the direct effect of Solinsky’s fat loss from those of the training that contributed to the fat loss on his performance, I think it’s reasonable to speculate that the fat loss did have a direct effect.

Many high-level runners who look very lean assume they are “lean enough”, but there is cause to believe that some of these runners could perform better by getting even leaner. What is certain is that leanness is critical enough to performance that every serious runner should monitor his body fat percentage as closely as he monitors his training.

Naturally, there are right and wrong ways to get leaner. Eating too little is definitely the wrong way. Not only will it fail to make you leaner by causing you to lose muscle along with (or even to some degree instead of) fat, but it will also sabotage your training by leaving your muscles under-fueled for maximum performance. The right ways to get leaner are to sensibly increase training volume, add more high-intensity running to your training, lift weights, and clean up your diet.

The last of these measures probably has the greatest potential to yield results in most cases. A lot of runners think they’re “lean enough” when they actually aren’t because they assume their diet is “good enough” when it’s actually not. If you look closely at your diet, you will probably find some flab that is very likely keeping a little extra flab on your body. Even small improvements could yield a small reduction in your measured body fat percentage, which may in turn result in your own Solinsky-style breakthrough.

[sig:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, Racing Weight Quick Start Guide: A 4-Week Weight Loss Plan for Endurance Athletes.

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Photo: Fithacker.com

Recent research suggests that there are foods we can eat more of that help fill us up, but also help us to eat fewer calories.

Written by: Linzay Logan

Endurance athletes are often concerned about their weight. Racing even a few pounds above ideal race weight can feel like carrying around a ton of bricks. Cutting calories and therefore eating less is the only sure fast way to lose weight. The simple equation is eat less than you burn and weight loss will result. But this is easier said than done. It usually ends with hunger and splurges on calorie-laden foods in order to feel full.

However, recent research suggests that there are foods we can eat more of that help fill us up, but also help us to eat fewer calories, leading to increased weight loss as reported by the NY Times. Puréeing vegetables and cayenne pepper are the tricks. Puréeing veggies and adding them to homemade dishes is the easiest way to add bulk to your meal without adding excess calories due to their low calorie count. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition conducted a study where participants ate casseroles with added puréed veggies until they felt satisfied. Overall, participants ate 200 to 350 calories less than when they ate casserole without the purée and reported no change in flavor enjoyment.

Another study conducted by the journal Physiology and Behavior found that adding cayenne pepper to dishes can help people eat fewer calories. In the study half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper was added to the participants’ food and it resulted in them eating 60 fewer calories at the following meal.

Adding cayenne pepper to dishes is a simple way to shave a few calories out of your daily intake and can lead up to a significant amount over the long run. Try adding cayenne pepper to soup, as a meat rub or a seasoning over a salad.

Puréeing vegetables is a little more work but reducing calorie intake by 200 to 350 calories is a significant and can be beneficial for those trying to maintain weight or lose weight. Carrots, spinach, cauliflower, beets, broccoli and sweet potatoes are excellent and easy veggies to purée. Always add water first to your blender or food processor before adding your veggies and blend away. Add purred veggies to casseroles, lasagna, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, taco meat, deviled eggs and even desserts such as cakes and brownies.

Experiment with cooking veggies before puréeing for creamier purées. However, it is important to note that many veggies lose much of their nutrients when cooked; cook veggies less to preserve their nutrient count and allow them to cool before puréeing.

[sig:LinzayLogan]

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Research shows simplicity is a virtue in the matter of weight management.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Several months ago a friend of mine purchased the Food Lovers Fat Loss system, an expensive kit of slickly packaged books and CDs and DVDs that deliver a weight-loss program based on the concept of food combining. Not only did the sheer volume of material in the kit seem totally overwhelming to me when I looked it over, but the underlying food combining concept—the idea that the key to weight-loss is eating certain types of foods together—also struck me as rather abstruse.

I didn’t want to undercut my friend’s enthusiasm for the program, so I kept my reservations to myself, but I did not expect her to stick with it very long and she did not. It was just too complex.

Research has shown that simplicity is a virtue in the matter of weight management. Those who lose weight successfully tend to focus on fewer rules than those who fail in their weight-loss efforts.

For example, in a 2010 study, American and German psychologists compared the perceived complexity and adherence rates of two diet programs—Brigitte, a simple German plan consisting of readymade meal plans, and Weight Watchers, a complicated plan based on a points system. Three-hundred ninety women currently following one program or the other were surveyed at the beginning, middle, and end of an eight-week period. The researchers found that, the more complex a dieter perceived her plan to be, the more likely she was to give it up before the end of the eight-week period.

If there were truly only one right way to eat for health, performance, and weight management, it wouldn’t matter how simple or complicated the rules were. You’d just have to do it. But in fact there are many different healthy diets. Vegetarian, Mediterranean, low-fat, “primitive”, and various other diets have been validated by scientific research. It’s not only the food that matters, however. As the study described above demonstrates, how you perceive the dietary rules you live by is also important. So instead of trying to figure out which diet is the absolute best, choose a diet from among the many healthy options that seems especially “doable” to you.

It doesn’t even have to be a diet per se. Studies have shown that a majority of the most successful dieters—those who have maintained a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for at least one year—do not follow formal diet plans. Instead, they choose a small handful of their own rules and heed them consistently. The typical runner knows enough about nutrition—and enough about himself or herself—to set sensible rules.

Here, for example, are the main rules that govern my current eating habits:

1.   At least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

2.   No sweets except a bit of dark chocolate, except for the occasional treat.

3.   No beverages with calories except for my evening glass of beer.

4.   Whole grains instead of refined grains whenever possible.

These few rules help me keep my weight in check because they address the specific dietary mistakes that had previously caused my weight to creep upward, and in a way that I find sustainable. But you might find that a completely different set of rules works for you. Here’s an example of an alternative set of rules that might work especially well for someone whose primary dietary mistake is overeating:

1.   Six meals and snacks per day.

2.   Stop eating when satisfied, not full.

3.   Protein with every meal and sack (to manage appetite).

Interestingly, research has also shown that successful dieters tend to eat a smaller variety of foods than the average person. While we’re used to thinking of dietary variety as a virtue (and it is), using repetition sensibly in your diet is another way to take advantage of simplicity in the effort to control your body weight. As long as you include a good balance and variety of foods within the day, it’s OK to eat more or less the same foods every day.

Weight management is difficult for most of us, no matter what. That’s because it requires resisting some foods we like that promote weight gain and also resisting the urge to overeat. Nothing can be done about these requirements. So don’t make weight management any more difficult than it has to be with a complicated diet. Keep it simple.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, Racing Weight Quick Start Guide: A 4-Week Weight-Loss Plan for Endurance Athletes.

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Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

As an athlete you can’t pursue weight loss the way the average dieter does, through severe caloric restriction. Calories are energy, after all, and you need a lot of energy to train effectively and to recover adequately from workouts. Severe calorie restriction would therefore simply sabotage your efforts to get fit and perform well in races.

You should never try to maximize the shedding of excess body fat and the building of peak race fitness simultaneously. There is an appropriate time to prioritize weight loss, but it’s not within a race-focused training cycle. Rather, it should be done in the several weeks preceding a training cycle. I refer to this period of weight-loss emphasis as a quick start.

Even during a quick start, however, you should not pursue fat loss the same way couch potatoes do. You still have to go after it in a way that supports your running ambitions. In other words, you need to pursue athletic weight loss.

How is this done? There are five keys to athletic weight loss.

1. Moderate calorie deficit

During a quick start you should aim to consume 300 to 500 fewer calories per day than your body would need to maintain its current weight. This deficit is sufficient to yield fairly quick weight loss, but it would be too large within the race-focused training process, when you need your diet to support heavy training for an upcoming race.

2. Strength training

A quick start is also a good time to make a greater commitment to strength training than you do at any other time. I recommend three full-body strength workouts per week at this time. This will help you lose weight by adding muscle mass to your frame and thereby increasing your metabolism, so you burn more fat at rest. Building strength during a quick start will also help you perform better and stay injury free during the subsequent race-focused training process.

3. Increased protein intake

I recommend that runners aim to get roughly 30 percent of their daily calories from protein during a quick start. There are two reasons for this recommendation. First, high-protein diets are more filling than moderate- and low-protein diets. So increasing your protein intake during a quick start will help you maintain your daily calorie deficit without hunger. Second, increased protein intake will help you build muscle through strength training.

Within the training cycle your protein intake needs to be lower to make room for increased consumption of carbohydrate, your most important endurance fuel.

4. Sprint intervals

A quick start is not the time for high-volume endurance training. That should wait until you’re within the race-focused training process. Of course, high-volume endurance training itself promotes fat loss. So if you’re not going to do it during a quick start, you have to promote fat loss through training in other ways. As we’ve seen, strength training is one way. Another is sprint interval workouts. Training sessions consisting of large numbers of very short (10-30 seconds) sprints are proven to promote significant fat loss, especially between workouts. They also develop power that will help you get off to a good start when you move into race-focused training.

This is not a type of training that you can do much of within the race-focused training period, when more race-specific types of workouts (longer intervals, tempo workouts, etc.) must be prioritized.

5. Fasting workouts

A fasting workout is a long, easy run undertaken in a glycogen-deprived state. This means you don’t eat before you start and you don’t take in any carbs along the way. This forces your body to rely on fat to fuel the workout, making it a great fat-burning session. I advise runners to perform one fasting workout per week during a quick start. Later, when you’re actively training toward a race, you should consume carbs before and during most of your long rides and runs to maximize your performance in those workouts.

You can find a complete quick start program that is customized to your individual needs in my Racing Weight Quick Start Guide. Remember, you’re an athlete—lose weight like one!

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

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New book shows endurance athletes how to make a fast leap toward their ideal racing weight.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

According to scientific surveys, more than half of competitive endurance athletes are above their ideal racing weight at any given time. And never are endurance athletes more likely to be above their racing weight—or farther from their racing weight—than on the first day of a new year.

Most of us train less in December than we do in any other month. And why not? Our last race of the year is behind us and the first race of the next season is far off. You need to dial back your training sometime, and December is the right time for many. Of course, reduced training tends to promote weight gain unless there is a commensurate reduction in food intake. But the typical endurance athlete eats more, not less, in December, because it’s the holiday season, after all. The result is five or more pounds of body fat accumulation between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.

January 1 is the traditional day when endurance athletes begin the effort to turn their body weight situation around. How has that effort worked out for you in the past? Has the process been slower and ultimately less successful than you hoped it would be? Why not try something different this year?

This coming January 1 happens to be the official publication date of Racing Weight Quick Start Guide, authored by—Yours Truly! This book presents a comprehensive four- to eight-week weight loss program designed to give endurance athletes a “quick start” toward their racing weight goal before they begin focused training for an important race. You can use the program to drop excess body fat anytime, but it’s particular useful at the start of the year for those athletes who follow the typical routine of racing between late spring and fall and taking the winter as an off season. Based on scientific research and real-world best practices, the quick start program (I believe) represents the most efficient and appropriate way for endurance athletes to pursue rapid fat loss, and I’m confident you’ll find it to be more effective than whatever methods you’ve relied on in past New Year’s weight-loss resolutions.

The Quick Start Guide is a companion to Racing Weight, which was published around this time last year. If you’re familiar with Racing Weight, you might wonder how the Quick Start Guide is different. I’ll tell you.

One of the important premises of Racing Weight is that it is impossible to maximize weight loss and fitness gains simultaneously. The fastest way to lose weight—significant calorie restriction—just does not provide enough energy to fuel optimal performance and recovery during periods of heavy training. Therefore, within a race-focused training cycle you need to make fitness your clear top priority and pursue weight loss only as a secondary means to that end. In most cases you can and should get leaner as you get closer to a big race, but you can’t lose weight as quickly as you would if you didn’t have to worry about racing and were thus free to cut calories more substantially. Racing Weight is all about how to lose weight in the right way to maximize race performance within a race-focused training cycle.

One point that I try to state very clearly in Racing Weight is that there is an appropriate time to flip your priorities, putting weight loss first and fitness second. The best time to do this is during a period of several weeks immediately preceding the start of a new training cycle. Shedding a few or several pounds of excess body fat quickly before you turn your attention to developing race fitness sets you up for maximum success in that fitness-building process. Racing Weight does not discuss the ins and outs of such weight-loss focus periods in any depth, however. The Racing Weight Quick Start Guide does. It is all about how to lose body fat fast in the right way at the right time as an endurance athlete.

I designed the quick start program to take all of the guesswork out of shedding body fat in a way that serves the special needs of endurance athletes. It shows you exactly what and how much to eat and how to train to drop body fat and retain muscle without going hungry and while also establishing a solid foundation of endurance fitness that you can build on when you transition into the training cycle.

I know I’m biased, but I am certain that you will be very pleased with the results that you get from my Racing Weight Quick Start Guide.

And it makes a great gift for the athlete you love!

Buy Racing Weight Quick Start Guide.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

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Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Several years ago I used to run on occasion with a female friend who twice qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon. One day when I met her at her house for a run I brought over a canister of a sports drink that I was then getting for free and wanted her to try. When she mixed up a bottle in the kitchen I noticed that she used only half the recommended amount of powder. Bemused, I asked why.

“It’s 120 calories per serving,” she said. “I don’t want all that.”

I was surprised. My philosophy on the use of ergogenic aids during workouts had always been to take in as many calories as I needed to maximize my performance. The idea that the calories I consumed during runs or rides might hinder my efforts to get leaner for racing never crossed my mind. But after witnessing my friend’s “workout fasting” I began asking around and learned that many endurance athletes intentionally restrict their calories during training to promote fat loss.

Is there any validity to the fear that taking in sports drinks, gels, and so forth in workouts makes it more difficult to shed excess body fat? Should you, at least in some circumstances, intentionally take in fewer calories than would be required to optimize your workout performance? Let’s look at the science.

Athletes who fast or are tempted to fast during workouts operate on the belief that the calories in ergogenic aides simply supplement the calories eaten during the rest of the day and thereby increase the day’s total calorie intake. But this is not the case. Studies have shown that when athletes consume carbohydrate during exercise, they eat less during the rest of the day. So by using a sports drink or whatever during workouts you get the advantage of better performance without the disadvantage of increased total daily calorie intake.

The other fear that lies behind the choice to restrict carbohydrate intake during workouts is the fear that doing so reduces the amount of fat burned during the workout. This is true. Your body will burn more carbs and less fat in workouts during which you consume carbs than during workouts in which you fast. But this does not mean that using a sports drink during workouts will make it harder for you to shed excess body fat. With respect to losing body fat, what matters is not the type of calories you burn during workouts but how many calories you burn, and you will usually burn more calories in carb-fueled workouts because you will be able to work harder in those workouts.

The reason it doesn’t matter whether you burn primarily fat or carbs during workouts is this: During the hours that follow a workout in which you burn mostly carbs, your body will burn a lot of fat. And during the hours that follow a workout in which you burn mostly fat, your body will burn very little fat. Research has consistently shown that the most effective workouts for fat loss are high-intensity interval workouts that burn mostly carbs. Why? Because the body burns a ton of fat after such workouts. So don’t worry about the fact that your body will burn less fat during carb-fueled workouts. You’ll come out ahead in the long run.

So does all of this mean you should never intentionally restrict carbohydrate intake during workouts that are long enough for carb consumption to make a difference (roughly one hour and up)? No. There are benefits associated with occasional workout fasting, but they have nothing to do with getting leaner. It so happens that some of the positive physiological adaptations to training are triggered by depletion of the body’s internal carbohydrate stores. When you consume carbs during a workout, your body’s carb stores become less depleted and there’s less stimulus for positive adaptations. In addition, it has been shown that performing longer workouts without taking in carbs increases the body’s fat-burning capacity during exercise, which aids performance in long-distance races.

It’s not necessary to withhold carbs in every long workout to maximize fitness gains and fat-burning capacity, but it’s a good idea to do it occasionally.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel.

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Dear Experts,

I really enjoyed Matt’s article on optimal racing body weight.  As a multisport athlete, I’m very concerned about getting an accurate picture of my body fat percentage. I currently have a body fat scale (with hand-held attachment) that measures the percentage via bioelectrical impedance. However, I suspect it is inaccurate by more than a few percentage points. I’ve heard of body fat scales calibrated specially for athletes—what is the technology behind this, and is it worth the investment? Should I switch to calipers instead (and what is the correct method to using them)? Other than hydrostatic body fat testing, what is the next best method you suggest I use?

Max

A.

Dear Max,

Body fat testing is an inexact science. The only way to directly measure body fat is through autopsy, which I don’t recommend. Even the so-called “gold standard” method of measuring body fat, hydrostatic weighing, is very indirect. In this case, what is actually being measured is the relationship between body volume and body density. A formula based on the known difference in density between feet tissue and lean body tissue is used to convert this measurement into an estimate of body fat percentage. As you might imagine, this formula contains a bit of guesswork. One consequence of this is that the relationship between the body volume/body mass ratio and body fat percentage differs by ethnicity. So the best formula for Caucasians is not the same as the best formula for African-Americans, and neither is 100 percent accurate for its designated ethnic group.

Bioelectrical impedance is really no more indirect a way to measure body fat percentage than hydrostatic weighing. In this case, a weak electrical current is sent through the body and the degree to which the body tissues resist, or impede, that current is measured. A formula based on the known difference between the electrical impedance of body fat tissue and lean body tissue is used to convert this measurement to an estimated body fat percentage. Studies comparing bioelectrical impedance and hydrostatic weighing have generally found a fairly high degree of agreement between them. Since the bioelectrical impedance method is much cheaper and easier to use, I consider it a good alternative to hydrostatic weighing. Although not perfectly accurate, it is consistent within individuals, making it suitable for tracking individual fluctuations in body fat percentage, if not for body fat contests with your friends.

The “athlete mode” available on some body fat scales that use bioelectrical impedance does not involve a different form of measurement. Rather, it involves a different conversion formula much like the alternative formulas used for different ethnicities in hydrostatic weighing. All highly active individuals should purchase units with an athlete mode.

I don’t recommend calipers because they are a pain in the butt to use and require training to use properly. While they are accurate when used correctly, doing so is not that easy, and even when they are used correctly they are no more accurate than the much simpler bioelectrical impedance method.

If you’re really concerned about accuracy, dual x-ray absorptiometry (or DEXA scanning) is the way to go. DEXA scanning offers the closest thing to a direct body fat measurement, as it entails looking inside the body in a way that clearly distinguishes fat, bone, and muscle tissue. DEXA scanning is best known as the tool physicians use to measure bone density, but it is in fact also now recognized as the most accurate way to measure body composition. Be forewarned, though: body fat percentage measurements obtained through DEXA scanning are almost always greater than those arrived at through other methods.

Most DEXA scanners are in hospitals. Many physicians provide DEXA scanning services as part of a routine physical or bone health check-up. But a growing number of facilities are offering DEXA scanning services specifically for individuals interested in tracking their body composition.

Matt

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[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel.

The post Ask The Experts: How Should I Measure My Body Fat Percentage? appeared first on Competitor.com.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Every runner knows that body weight affects running performance. Because your body must overcome the force of gravity with every stride, the heavier you are, the higher is the energy cost of running at any given pace. One study found that every 5 percent of added body weight reduced running performance by 5 percent.

All runners perform best when they are near the bottom of their healthy weight range. There is such a thing as being too light, of course. You won’t run well if you’re undernourished or if you don’t have enough body fat to support basic health. Nor is being at your ideal racing weight a guarantee of successful racing. There’s also a little factor called fitness that plays an important role. But assuming you’re fit, you will generally have your best races when you’re about as light as you can be without compromising your health.

Your ideal racing weight is determined primarily by your body fat level. There’s not much you can do about the other sources of mass in your body: bone, muscle, water, etc. No matter how hard you train or how carefully you eat, all of that weight will stay. It’s excess body fat that accounts for the difference between current weight and ideal racing weight in most runners, and thus it’s fat mass that you must lose to attain your ideal racing weight.

So, what is your ideal racing weight? Given the fact that body fat is the primary determinant of ideal racing weight, the best way to estimate it is to calculate how much you will weigh when you’ve reduced your body fat percentage to the optimal level. Optimal body fat percentage is not the same for everyone. There are many factors that affect how lean an individual runner can become. These include gender, age, genetics, and history of being overweight. However, even runners who have all of these factors working against them can get fairly lean.

The following table presents optimal racing weight body fat percentage ranges for different gender and age groups of runners. Most runners can expect to get their body fat percentage down within the range associated with their gender and age group through proper training and diet.

You can expect to reach the lower limit of your ideal range only if you typically lose weight fairly easily, you have never been seriously overweight, and you are willing and able to maintain a high training volume. If your current body fat percentage is well above your optimal range, you should aim only to reach the upper limit of that range initially through increased training and improvements in diet.

Estimating the body fat percentage you can realistically expect to attain at your peak fitness level is not an exact science. Just use common sense and the considerations I named above to make an educated guess for yourself. Also bear in mind that the further you are from your peak fitness level currently and the more room for improvement your diet has, the more you can expect to lower your body fat percentage.

The final step in determining your racing weight is to calculate how much fat weight you will have to lose to get down to your goal body fat percentage. Let’s look at how to do this with the example of a 38-year-old female who currently weighs 140 pounds and has 22 percent body fat and who sets an initial goal of getting down to 17 percent body fat (the upper limit of her ideal range) through improved training and diet.

Step 1: Calculate current body fat mass. Body fat mass = current weight x current body fat percentage expressed in decimal form. In this example: 140 lbs x 0.22 = 30.8 lbs.

Step 2: Calculate current lean body mass. Lean body mass = current weight – fat mass. In this example: 140 lbs – 30.8 lbs = 109.2 lbs.

Step 3: Calculate goal weight. Goal weight = current lean body mass ÷ goal lean body mass percentage. (Note: goal lean body mass percentage is 1.0 – your goal body fat percentage expressed in decimal form.) In this example: 109.2 lbs ÷ 0.83 = 131.5 lbs. Ta-da!

For a more complete description of this method and a step-by-step program to reach your ideal racing weight, check out The Racing Weight Quick Start Guide.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

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Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

Several years ago I used to run on occasion with a female friend who twice qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon. One day when I met her at her house for a run I brought over a canister of a sports drink that I was then getting for free and wanted her to try. When she mixed up a bottle in the kitchen I noticed that she used only half the recommended amount of powder. Bemused, I asked why.

“It’s 120 calories per serving,” she said. “I don’t want all that.”

I was surprised. My philosophy on the use of ergogenic aids during workouts had always been to take in as many calories as I needed to maximize my performance. The idea that the calories I consumed during runs or rides might hinder my efforts to get leaner for racing never crossed my mind. But after witnessing my friend’s “workout fasting” I began asking around and learned that many endurance athletes intentionally restrict their calories during training to promote fat loss.

Is there any validity to the fear that taking in sports drinks, gels, and so forth in workouts makes it more difficult to shed excess body fat? Should you, at least in some circumstances, intentionally take in fewer calories than would be required to optimize your workout performance? Let’s look at the science.

Athletes who fast or are tempted to fast during workouts operate on the belief that the calories in ergogenic aides simply supplement the calories eaten during the rest of the day and thereby increase the day’s total calorie intake. But this is not the case. Studies have shown that when athletes consume carbohydrate during exercise, they eat less during the rest of the day. So by using a sports drink or whatever during workouts you get the advantage of better performance without the disadvantage of increased total daily calorie intake.

The other fear that lies behind the choice to restrict carbohydrate intake during workouts is the fear that doing so reduces the amount of fat burned during the workout. This is true. Your body will burn more carbs and less fat in workouts during which you consume carbs than during workouts in which you fast. But this does not mean that using a sports drink during workouts will make it harder for you to shed excess body fat. With respect to losing body fat, what matters is not the type of calories you burn during workouts but how many calories you burn, and you will usually burn more calories in carb-fueled workouts because you will be able to work harder in those workouts.

The reason it doesn’t matter whether you burn primarily fat or carbs during workouts is this: During the hours that follow a workout in which you burn mostly carbs, your body will burn a lot fat as it spares carbs for use in replenishing your depleted muscle glycogen stores. And during the hours that follow a workout in which you burn mostly fat, your body will burn a lot of carbs as it spares fats for use in replenishing your depleted intramuscular triglyceride stores. Research has consistently shown that the most effective workouts for fat loss are high-intensity interval workouts that burn mostly carbs. Why? Because the body burns a ton of fat after such workouts. So don’t worry about the fact that your body will burn less fat during carb-fueled workouts. You’ll come out ahead in the long run.

So does all of this mean you should never intentionally restrict carbohydrate intake during workouts that are long enough for carb consumption to make a difference (roughly one hour and up)? No. There are benefits associated with occasional workout fasting, but they have nothing to do with getting leaner. It so happens that some of the positive physiological adaptations to training are triggered by depletion of the body’s internal carbohydrate stores. When you consume carbs during a workout, your body’s carb stores become less depleted and there’s less stimulus for positive adaptations. In addition, it has been shown that performing longer workouts without taking in carbs increases the body’s fat-burning capacity during exercise, which aids performance in long-distance races.

It’s not necessary to withhold carbs in every long workout to maximize fitness gains and fat-burning capacity, but it’s a good idea to do it occasionally.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel.

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