1. Think of function over scales.

When the body’s physiology is operating at its optimal level it performs better in every aspect including fat loss, muscle gain, endurance, immunity, energy levels, strength, power, speed, you name it. So first and foremost, you need to be looking after your physiological systems and what’s happening internally before jumping the gun and forcing change on the outside first.

For example, when you focus solely on weight, you lose sight of how your body is actually functioning.This mindset will diminish your future ability to lose weight, increase your energy levels, reach your fitness potential and most importantly, be content with exercising.

This mindset also causes you do foolish things like skip meals, eat erratically, cut carbohydrates and proteins to limit caloric intake. This type of behaviour will leave you in a state of burning hunger that will force you to consume more calories and empty carbohydrates than you should have. You’ll end up burning muscle instead of fat and by aiming to take the quick-fix option of fast weight loss over function; you’ll setup a mental expectation where body composition is not as important as what you read on the scales.

Like Stephen Covey’s principal of production vs. production capability (P vs.PC) and the example of the goose that lays the golden egg. To get more eggs (production) you have to look after the goose (production capability). If you were to threaten, beat, cajole or even kill the goose in an attempt to reap as many eggs as possible today, you may be a lot richer for the next few days, but you’d soon end up with nothing and without the possibility of any future eggs.

So to nurture the goose, the body’s ability to continue improving fitness, burning calories, recover, rejuvenate and stoke the fire of a well-oiled physiological machine, think about function first. Focus on how your energy systems are working and get them  functioning at the optimal level. Get your cardio-pulmonary systems to transport and utilise oxygen better. Focus on the recovery and strength/endurance of your muscles and the health of your skeletal system. Focus on building a stronger and stronger immune system to cope with anything that comes its way.

When bones, joints and muscles are working well, your immune system is healthy and strong and your physiological systems are geared for aggressive energy production you function at your optimal level. You burn fat faster; you churn through calories at a greater rate with more naturally occurring activity just as you do when you are ‘bouncing with energy’. You recover quicker and stronger, you eat and fuel your muscles better which in turn produces a greater mechanical machine, with a higher metabolism, burning more and more and more fat!

If you think you can burn fat and lose weight without getting the internal parameters up to par first, well – good luck!

2. Hang with performers.

The best thing you can do, hands down, is hang around people who are already doing what you want to do. Fly with the eagles as they say, don’t flock with the turkeys. Hang out with people who will pull you up rather than those friends who will pull you down. Lay with dogs and you’ll get fleas. Find a mentor; find a social group that will ‘rub off on you’. If you want to play golf or chess and you play with someone worse than you, you won’t improve much. If you play with someone better than you, you’re forced to get better quicker.

If you were to go up to someone that is doing what you want to do, like living a fit, healthy lifestyle after losing a lot of weight for example, and you ask them what they did or you read their story about how they changed their life, that’s not a bad way to start. However, it will pale in insignificance compared to hanging around them while they do what they do. Don’t ask what they do, just watch. Watch what they eat, what they do, the way they think, what beliefs must they have in order to say that, think that or do that.

For instance, if you hear a person say “I’ve had a bit of a tight lower back lately and my legs are a bit stiff, I don’t want to aggravate the problem, I might give the gym a miss to rest up the next few days.” What must they believe to say that? Versus another person saying “I’ve had a bit of a tight lower back lately and my legs are a bit stiff, I don’t want them to seize up I think I better get out on the bike tonight or go for a gentle run to loosen everything out before I stretch.” What must that person believe about recovery? I’m not saying which is right or wrong, better or worse, just that people have very different beliefs and those beliefs come out in what they say and do. I can assure you that you can learn more from that than anything you’ll read. So hang around people and groups that will pull you up, that produce results, consistent performance and influence you to adopt positive habits. Hang with performers. If you try to fly solo – good luck!

3. Act as if.

Act now as if you are already living your fitness and performance dream. Fake it till you make it as they say. Imagine what life you would lead if you were an elite but social athlete. What would your training, diet and lifestyle look like? How would you treat your sleep, rest and stress levels? What degree of respect would you pay to your body on a consistent and regular basis? How motivated do you think you would be to keep what you have, not to lose your figure, your fitness and your energy levels? Now let me guess, your thinking “Yeah I know what my lifestyle would look like, but that’s all well and good for someone who’s already fit, but I’m not an elite athlete now you know, I’ll live like that once I’ve achieved my fitness goals and got the figure I want!” Good luck!

4. Combine weights with cardio of various intensities throughout your week…and enjoy it all.

Lift weights! Enough said.
If the popularity of the beneficial reasons for everyone to lift weights hasn’t breached your resistance to it from the age-old fear of “I’ll build bulky muscles” or “that’s only for body builders,” then my reasons probably won’t help.

Aim to lift weights two to three times per week and like any exercise plan, slowly progress your workouts by adding more weight or reps or sets, or completing the same workout in less time.

Train another two to three times per week with cardiovascular modes of exercise of various intensities over different sessions. Some should be shorter sessions of higher intensity and some longer sessions of lower intensity.

This combination of weight training strengthens and builds the body’s musculoskeletal systems and develops greater muscular endurance. Combined with improving the capacity of the anaerobic energy systems, it complements the cardio improvements in the aerobic energy system, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. This means improved O2 utilisation and more blood, oxygen and lymph fluid moving around the body, strengthening the body’s immune and digestive function as well.

Every time you exercise, think about breathing deeply, oxygenating every cell in your body, every muscle, every part of your brain and feel the energy that comes from it. Feel strong, think strong, and enjoy the process of being a superior athlete because you’re living like one. Don’t think of what you hate about a certain style of training, think of what you could like and focus on that. Think about feeling stronger, healthier and fitter with each training session you do – while you’re doing it. Love it! If you think walking alone will give you a peak performance body – good luck!

5. Sleep, rest and undulating energy.

There’s a bit of a skill involved in knowing the difference between different types of tiredness. Most people just accept low energy levels and say “Oh, I’ve just been really tired today” or “I’ve just got no energy right now.” Listening to this it sounds like low energy was something that just happened to them, like someone stole it. Bastards! You can’t just wait until or hope your energy ‘comes back’. It doesn’t work like that.

For a peak performing body and to be switched on like an elite athlete you need to know what type of tiredness you are experiencing, why you’re experiencing it, and how to correct it. If your energy is low you can change it within three or four minutes if you need to. The exception to this is if your problem is nutrition based and that may take slightly longer or if it’s chronic sleep deprivation, which would take days or even weeks of better sleep habits to correct. Most common causes of tiredness are well within your influence to correct. With the major one’s being acute sleep deprivation (a few nights or hours), food energy (low glucose or poor nutrition), or tiredness from lack of stimulation. If you think the root of your tiredness is one of these, then it is possible to be switched on within minutes.

Energy is within your control. So the key understanding to grasp here is that energy works best when following patterns or cycles, mainly undulating high/low rhythms. For example, if you were to do little throughout the day so you never really have high energy levels and then sleep little at night so you are in a shallow sleep for several hours, then your energy would look something like this:

If, however, you were to produce a more severe variance in the amplitudes of your energy curve by doing plenty during the day with high energy, ATP expensive activity, then go to bed at night and have a deep long sleep, your energy would look more like this:

This highly undulating pattern is what cycle’s energy better. How do you get HR down? By putting it up. How do you get BP down? By putting it up. How do you get energy down? By putting it up. When this cycle is messed with, it screws with your sleep and energy, just look at jet lag or shift workers.

Start getting in tune with your body, if it’s sleep tiredness your struggling with, do more during the day to build up adenosine and tire you out, then get to bed a little earlier for the next few days and see how it goes. If its food/nutrition energy based tiredness, make sure you are eating small meals often with fibrous carbohydrates (and starchy carbohydrates if you are really active) and drink plenty of water. If its stimulation, don’t always go for a coffee and definitely not a Red Bull for a ‘pickup,’ get your physiology moving. Literally get up, walk for a minute, jump for a minute and then see how you feel. See tip 10 on State.

Again, if you believe you can just wait till your energy comes back when it’s low, or wait until the sea tides and winds blow in your favour – good luck!

6. Nutrition.

Food is your fuel. You need it.

Eat clean. You should know what foods to eat, but in case you need reminding here are the guidelines. If it grows out of the ground or off a tree, you can eat it. If it can run, fly or swim, you can kill it and you can eat it. That’s it! If whatever you are about to eat comes in a box or a bag or a tin, or is served up to you by somebody else and you don’t know what it came in, then you have to decide how far removed that food has become from its original state before you eat it. If you think it’s fairly close, then go ahead, but if you believe it has been processed, frozen, had oil, salt and preservatives added and stored for some time, then your choice to eat it is a brave one.

As an example, if you eat a potato, you know it came from the ground. If you eat a bagged potato chip you know it once came from the ground but something else has been done to it and other ‘God knows what’ added to it. If you eat a hot deep-fried potato chip you know it is even further removed from its original state and even less healthy still.

If you eat whole-grain wheat, that’s close to the original state. If you eat whole grain pasta, that’s once removed from the original state. If you eat white pasta, that’s once more removed and slightly further along the refined food line. Finally, if you eat lasagne, sausage rolls and hotdogs, and these types of food are your staple diet, then you have no idea how far away you are from the original foods that made it up and you cannot expect to have a peak performing body.

Rather than food groups, think about your nutrition in terms of four major categories in relation to the macro and micro nutrients – proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals.

Protein – Aim for about one gram per kilo of body weight throughout the day but if you’re aiming to get lean then you’ll need a little more.

Carbohydrates – Your consumption of unrefined carbohydrates should very much be lifestyle specific. By that, I mean a  non-exercising person with a sedentary occupation aiming for weight loss will not need nearly as much carbohydrates as a gym-junkie labourer aiming to pack on muscle. The difference in these examples is gigantic. From the former person requiring as little as 0.5 – 1g/Kilo of bodyweight per day to the latter potentially requiring 5-6g/kilo per day.

Fats – You want to include healthy fats in your diet. You can’t cut out fat altogether and expect a machine-like body. You want to cut down all saturated fats and have healthy oils, Omega 3 and 6, fish oils, and seed oils up to two or three times per day in small amounts. Some people have larger amounts only two to three times per week, I prefer smaller more regular amounts but just get it in.

Vitamins and minerals – You’ve been told to eat your fruit and veg. Now do it! You can get away with just carbohydrates and protein for energy, fat loss and muscle gain for a little while but it the long run your energy and performance will suffer when the smooth running of all physiological processes start losing efficiency and potency. It’s like a computer that is state-of-the-art when you buy it but slowly builds up crap from pop-ups, viruses, RAM-slowing programs and eventually runs like a box of snot. Don’t wait until it’s too late, get your micronutrients daily.

Timing – The age old question. “Do I eat before exercise or not?” If you’re about to train with intensity eat before and after. If it’s light exercise then it won’t matter so much and an empty stomach will be fine.

7. Stretching and flexibility.

There is a lot to be said about the role of flexibility in movement and effective movement patterns. For every muscle or joint that is tight there is a restricted ROM that expends more energy and effort to move about and produces more wear and tear from tighter friction in the articulating parts. It’s like trying to bend over to tie your shoelace with a massive rubber band around your chest holding you from behind. You’d have to pull through the force of the lackey band to get down there and the force of the band pulls stronger and stronger as it gets pulled longer and tighter. Imagine this ‘restricted’ movement occurring with every turn, twist, step, push or pull and feel just how energy consuming and inefficient it becomes, tiring the body and hindering your performance. Compare this to effortlessly bending forward or twisting without any resistance at all and you get an idea of the quality of life
benefits of flexibility.

When talking about better performance on a daily basis it is a significant difference when each and every movement is fluent and smooth like the motions of a ballerina that look totally effortless. While they hold their postures and get into positions that are extremely difficult, they can do so because of their fantastic flexibility and efficiency of movement. You might be very, very strong, but if you’re ‘tight’ try doing any repetitive movements in even half these ranges of motion for some time without massive fatigue – good luck!

8. Set a goal, work out the plan and live in the process.

Some people say to focus only on the goal in mind, some say to live only in the moment, while others say constantly look at past performance, current performance and forecast future performance based on trends. The preference for most high achievers is to have a specific goal, work out the most likely plan and work towards it while regularly stopping to check you are on track.

Look at the summit to see where you’re going, climb a little higher, look at the summit, climb a little higher, and keep adjusting your course to stay on track but never stop the process of climbing. This means to set a goal – you need to know exactly what the ‘summit’ is. Work out a plan – to the best of your ability, with the help of mentors and those that have gone before you, work out a plan that is the most probable road to success.

Work out a path to the summit. Then climb, climb like hell. All the desire in the world and the best laid plans and maps will never get you anywhere if you don’t act. You have to move. Then regularly step back mentally from the maze of climbing with your head down and look at where you are in regards to the summit to see if you’re on track. Are you heading in the right direction and getting
closer at the right pace? Check your weight, check your fitness, check your performance and results, whatever your goal may be. You must constantly live in this process of action and reflection. Don’t just get caught up in the maze of wondering with your head down, because you might be working hard and moving fast but in the wrong direction.

Most importantly, don’t just sit dreaming about the ideal summit, you have to act. Keep adjusting your plan if you must. In truth, you won’t actually ever know the exact plan if you’ve never been there but you can get good advice, use common sense and use experience as a guide. They say success comes from good judgement, which comes from experience and experience sometimes comes from bad judgement. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is insanity.

You must be totally honest with where you are in relation to your goal. You can’t be in denial and pretend you’re in a better situation than you are or you’ll never make the journey. It’s like the Stockdale principal – being totally honest with current reality while remaining steadfast in your conviction of succeeding in the journey to the summit.

If you don’t have a goal and you don’t have a plan and you don’t regularly check where you are at any given moment – good luck!

9. Become comfortable with minor discomforts.

Many people live only for comforts. They indulge in only ‘tension-relieving’ activities. Producers involve themselves in ‘goal-achieving’ activities, and there’s the difference. There is nothing wrong with enjoying comfort from time to time, that’s normal and healthy. The problem is when one is unable or unwilling to handle necessary discomforts.

How many times have I heard this…?
“I’ll only train if it’s not too hot or not too cold
“I’m not too tired.”
“I can’t be bothered today.”
“I won’t eat those healthy foods because they’re boring.”
“I love my food”.

When it comes to work, stress, cigarettes etc. it’s easier and more relaxing to light up than to quit, it’s easier to put the work off until tomorrow than complete it today, it’s easier to cram study the night before than work diligently over time. So many people take the easy option of workouts, cutting corners in tasks. The research is old on the topic of instant gratification. They will become weaker,
get sick more often, the sickness will last longer and they will return just slightly weaker still to repeat the process in a downward spiral. They will earn less money and probably end up working for the man all their life.

Why are elite athletes elite, why are top business people successful, why are the fittest people so fit? Because they were born that way? Yeah right. Because they did what was necessary even when they didn’t feel like it, despite the discomfort. Take for example soldiers in the military. Training in heat, fully clothed, carrying heavy packs, through harsh terrain. They train to be disciplined,
hardened, achievers and they are ready to do whatever needs to be done at any given time.

Successful people get into the habit of doing the things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do. What are these things? Well, they are the same things that successful people don’t like to do but they do them anyway, because they know they must to succeed.

Put up with minor discomforts or you’ll be hit with massive discomforts later. Take the easy road and – good luck!

10. Choose your state and act conducive to it.

Manage your energy levels. This is the key; this is the attribute that sets all constant achievers apart from the excuse makers and whiners. It involves many of the other disciplines, like #3 – act as if, even if you don’t feel like it, #5 – managing sleep and activity cycles, #6 – nutrition for high energy and #9 – doing what sometimes is discomforting to get into the right state.

Your State refers to the combinations of your physiology (physical movement, blood chemicals and breathing), your psychology (what you’re focussing on/thinking about) and your emotion (mood). Your state means everything. How you behave, make decisions, communicate, how you perform is all based on state. There are times when you totally surprise yourself in the accomplishment of an activity, and other times when you think “damn, I’m usually a lot better than that.” There are times when you make thought out smart decisions and times when you hastily make rash and unreasonable decisions. There are times when you communicate openly and sincerely, and times when you bite someone’s head off. We’ve all done it, its state.

Behaviour is depicted by state. If you play a sport and you’re ‘in the zone’ you perform differently to when your state is “damn I just don’t have it today.” Every activity, from exercising to communicating personal disputes, to selling on the phone to reading, relaxing, studying or creating something, all have unique states conducive to effectiveness. Being in a high energy, adrenalin pumped motivated state is great for training hard. It’s not so great for reading a book before bed though. Being in a relaxed, focused and attentive state is great for learning or communicating or being creative but not for enduring a tough physical ordeal.

Manage your state. When you need to be on, be fully on. When you need to switch off, switch off fully. You might be wondering “how do I just suddenly get energy and into a motivated state when the time calls for it, especially if I’m tired or can’t be bothered?” The answer is – you’re in that state because of the combination of the three parts emotion, psychology and physiology. Move your body,
get up and move around, think of faster more energetic thoughts, imagining relaxing in a hammock by the ocean will relax the mind and body which is great for relaxation but not for high energy, so quit thinking of sleep and focus on explosive, energy producing thoughts.

Choose your state, choose your energy and choose your performance. Either you run your state or your state will run you. If you want to succeed and perform at your best you can only do it from a resourceful state. All I can say is if you try to achieve anything from an un-resourceful state – good luck!

Remember – there’s no such thing as luck, success is where opportunity meets preparedness. Be prepared everyday!

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• The Benefit Of A Healthy Lifestyle On The Nervous System.
• SLEEP
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Our focus today is to discuss how diet, exercise and the healthy lifestyle in general all have a massive influence on the health and functioning of the nervous system.

The nervous system is generally broken into two divisions – the Central Nervous System (CNS), being the brain and spinal cord, and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), being all other nerves that branch from the spinal cord to the rest of the body. Together, these divisions process information from our environment to help us make sense of our world. It does this through sensory
receptors, which we know as our five senses, and through perception, which is our thinking and interpretation of stimuli from these senses. It is considered so vital because it controls, consciously or unconsciously, all the other systems via the brain, spinal cord and nerves.

Balance and Coordination

What most people don’t realise is the complexity of our senses. It is often thought that sight, sound, taste, smell and touch are the only sense receptors and are pretty simple matters. What is not always understood is that firstly, there are many other senses, such as those for pain, temperature, balance, and proprioception, and that each of these has an intricate communication network between the brain and body that flows back and forth to be able to understand and function in the world around us.

Let’s take sight for instance. Our eyes might take in light signals from an obstacle in our path, send them to the brain via the optical nerve, our brain then makes its own interpretation of what that light stimulus is, or means, and then sends a responsive message down the respective nerves and muscles to produce the required movement to side-step the danger. Most of which is unconscious
in a reflexive movement.

Earlier, I mentioned the sense of balance. This refers to the awareness of the body’s movement, acceleration and position relative to the outside world. Even if you were blind you could still tell if you were upside down!

Proprioception, on the other hand, coming from the Latin word ‘proprius’ meaning ‘ones own’ and ‘perception’, is the kinaesthetic sense that provides information on the relative position of the parts of the body. For example, you can probably quite easily close your eyes and touch the tip of your nose with the tip of your finger and not lose awareness of where the hand is even though you can’t see it, touch it, etc.

There are specific types of proprioceptors in our muscles and tendons that indicate how stretched or tense a muscle is and can cause a reflexive response to contract certain muscles based on the perceived need. That is why you can stand on one leg with your eyes shut and the minor tremors in your foot keep you balanced. The proprioception in the foot and ankle FEELS for changes in muscle length and tension to signal to then signal to the brain that you’re falling one way or another and reflexively fires a response to the muscles to pull you back in alignment. That is, if you train correctly for good balance. Otherwise you end off like many of the elderly that suffer fractures and falls from insufficient balance and strength.

So we know there is an intricate interplay between these sensory nerves that run TO the CNS from the sensors in the skin/muscles/eyes etc, and the effecter nerves, those that run FROM the CNS to the effecting organ/muscle. Therefore, when we exercise or are regularly active it is literally practicing movement and this promotes a more ‘in-tune’ communication between the sensory input and the muscles. There are also more and better receptors which means better balance, coordination, easier movement patterns and ultimately less falls and breakages.

Stress and Fatigue

CNS fatigue is a common problem in this day and age and can sometimes be a result of chronic stress, rampant in our society today. Many do not realise that fatigue is not just something that only comes from lengthy activity, or muscle fatigue, or lack of sleep. It is also a condition that can almost wipe a person out if their nervous system is on full throttle, like stress or intense workloads,
for long periods of time without reprieve.

Essentially, stress is a response to a perceived situation that leads to the ‘Sympathetic’ response in the nervous system. We commonly know of this mode of neural function as ‘Fight or Flight’, where adrenalin and peripheral blood flow dominate, readying you to respond physically to a threatening situation. The opposite of this is the ‘Parasympathetic’ mode of nervous function which
is when our mind and body are in a state most conducive to resting, recuperating, eating, sleeping and higher brain function (rather than impulse thinking), as blood is no longer primarily in the arms and legs but in the gut and cerebral areas.

One of the great reasons why exercise is fantastic for helping with stress is due to the contrastive effect that it has on physical tension. To explain further, when we experience long-term tension or stress that is slightly above normal levels, which is all that is required for one to feels ‘stressed out’, a great way to dissipate this it to massively crank up the tension for a short period of time. It’s a bit like raising your heart rate and blood pressure periodically to improve fitness which eventually results in lowering them in the end. Likewise, elevating tension and physical energy periodically through exercise results is a contrastive relaxation at the  conclusion of the bout that, in comparison, feels like ‘letting go’ to the body and mind.

Using exercise as a stress relief and change of state is important for the health of the body and mind. Keep in mind though, if one were to exercise intensely and go back to a stressed job or ‘worked-up’ state for the rest of the week they are probably doing more harm than good. We MUST have the cycling between the ‘turned on’ mode of Sympathetic function and the ‘turned off’ mode of
Parasympathetic recovery.

Cognitive Function and Psychological Pathology

The brain is the master commander of this system and the brain needs plenty of glucose and oxygen from constant, healthy blood flow. When we improve blood circulation through movement and activity we help provide more glucose, nutrients and oxygen to the brain. Sufficient glucose is so important for logical reasoning, impulse control and concentration, for without sufficient levels
the cortex of the brain responsible for these higher functions reverts back to our primitive ‘quenchmy- desire-at-all-cost’ impulsive behaviour.

It is also considered that one of the reasons why the elderly tend to suffer some decrease in cognitive function is in part due to a reduction in blood flow to the brain.

Studies show activity improves memory, decreases Alzheimer’s, and improves learning ability, concentration and abstract reasoning. In many cases exercise has shown significantly better improvements than even medication in the higher mental processes that involve planning, organization, and the ability to mentally juggle different intellectual tasks at the same time.

There is an old saying – “use it or lose it!” It applies to almost all contexts, including habits, character, skill-sets, muscles, nerves, emotions – you name it! And of course it also applies to the brain, both in cognitive function as well as physically, losing neural connections and physical brain matter when there is insufficient stimulus to sustain it.

Movement itself requires large amounts of cognitive function especially from the regions of the brain responsible for coordination and movement. The more complex the movement the more cognitive function is required to coordinate the interplay between sensory information (balance, proprioception, position, etc) and muscle recruitment at the right time with the right force.

Exercises that involve large body movements and many joints like sport, dancing or functional exercises, for example, are fantastic for promoting extra stimulus to the brain and hence better cognitive function and even better health.

Do you know how many neural stimuli, number of muscles and muscle contractions are involved in simply putting your food-laden fork into your mouth? It’s certainly more than I could possibly detail. Now imagine standing on one leg while pressing a light dumbbell 45 degrees out to the side above your head while squatting on that one leg and trying to touch the floor with the other hand. Your brain is going CRAZY! This is great for maintaining cognitive function. ‘Use it, and you will actually GAIN it!’

Depression

Depression is another rampant disease today. It effects a growing population of people and an even larger un-diagnosed populace. There has always been evidence that exercise helps with mood and depression, but even more evidence is continually appearing proving that exercise, nutrition, quality sleep and a healthy lifestyle all play a gigantic role in radically improving physiological state, emotions, depression and general mood. In fact, a study done at Duke University Medical Centre found that an aerobic exercise program decreased depression and improved the cognitive abilities of middle-aged and elderly men and women just as effectively as the leading medication.
The nervous system is powerful and absolutely vital. A well functioning one is essential to maintaining good
health and longevity.

Train your system, train it well. It will certainly pay off in the end!

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A calorie isn’t just a calorie. If one were to consume 2000 calories per day mostly consisting of fat while another person consumed exactly 2000 calories per day of mostly protein, would that be a similar energy intake? Not at all! What about 2000 calories of carbohydrates?

Firstly, we need to take into consideration the caloric ‘cost’ of digesting, absorbing and utilising each of the macronutrients, as it requires energy to process and utilise energy. This is known as the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) and anything that burns calories has a thermic side effect (produces heat as by-product) and this is exactly what digesting food does. Typically, it accounts for about 10% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Have you ever noticed you get hotter after a big meal, that’s TEF at work; some people often sweat from the rise in metabolism after a descent meal. So how does this relate to calorie costs and energy intake? Well simply, that each macronutrient has a very different energy cost.

Fat, for instance, has a very low energy cost and the vast majority of each gram of fat (which contains roughly nine calories) can be stored with relative efficiency, preserving almost all of the original calories (unfortunately). Protein on the other hand is the most energy costly to digest and absorb and the TEF of protein can be as large as 25% (depending on the source of protein). This means that for every gram of protein that you ingest (which contains roughly four calories) you only really get 75% of the energy, or three calories per gram, as the rest is lost in utilisation. Carbohydrates are the middle ground with a moderate energy cost of digestion or TEF.

So, our 2000 calories of each macronutrient has now turned into 2000 calories take the energy cost of digesting every gram of that nutrient. As you can see it’s already a different playing field.

Secondly, we need to factor in the combinations of macronutrients that are consumed together. You’ll almost never have just one nutrient making up the entire daily diet as in our fictitious example. For instance, is consuming a 500 calorie meal primarily from the combination of carbohydrates and fat going to promote the same level of fat-burning as 500cals of primarily fat and protein? Again, the answer is no! Fat and carbohydrates together is probably the worst scenario for fat burning, it raises blood glucose (sugar) and blood lipids/triglycerides (fat) together at the same time as peaking insulin, the master ‘storage’ enzyme, so all the above mentioned blood contents are stored including the fat and fat burning is switched off. Each nutrient on its own, however, will not have an as detrimental effect. For instance, even consuming pure fat, by itself, will not store as much fat as a lesser amount consumed in conjunction with carbohydrates/glucose and the inevitably ensuing insulin spike that will follow.

What about carbohydrates and protein together? Or all three nutrients together in roughly equal caloric proportions? Keep in mind that, calorically, 20 grams of fat is pretty similar to 45 grams of carbohydrates (before taking TEF into account). Well, this great question all comes down to our main point for today…

Finally, we come to the all important timing. We’ve gone from our example of 2000 calories of differing macro make ups, to 2000 calories – TEF, to 2000cals – TEF plus considering the different nutrient combinations. Now let’s go to the real kicker – timing!

You could eat the same caloric intake of the exact same macronutrient proportional make up with one specific meal timing to dismally lose muscle and gain fat, while another meal timing supply of the same nutrients (calories and proportions) can promote muscle building and fat loss. So, ‘when is that?’ you ask.

The real subject here has to do with ‘nutrient partitioning’ but we will go into that in more depth in a later article, so stay tuned. For now just know that what happens to a nutrient once ingested is pertinent to the state that the body is in, or about to be in, at the time of ingesting and absorbing into the bloodstream.

Below are the key points to remember:
1) Training changes all the rules. “Don’t eat carbohydrates at night!” but if you have just finished an energy-draining training session and have more training on the cards for the following day then this is when you should have your carbohydrates. “Don’t eat high GI carbohydrates!” That’s unless you have just trained which could be a good time to use some high GI for quick glycogen replenishment. “Eat a low-carbohydrates diet for fat loss!” Very true, unless you train like an athlete. Factoring your training into the consumption of carbohydrates is vital to getting the most out for your nutrition and training. Physical exertion is when you need muscle glycogen (carbohydrates) and when you finish is when you need to replace it. Loading up on carbohydrates without the need for it (for someone who doesn’t train often, or engages in only low intensity walking for instance) won’t help at all. The person who flogs themselves in a glycogen-depleting workout should use that time post-workout to get the carbohydrates in when it’s needed. Blood flow to the muscles is pumping, glucose transport into muscle cells is increased (non-insulin-dependently) and insulin sensitivity is high, so make sure the carbohydrates are low fat.

2) Fat burning occurs best when blood glucose and insulin are relatively low, even if fats are consumed. So when trainings out of the picture for at least a few hours go the lower carb intake route for best effect.

3) When muscle glycogen levels are already low, like after low carbohydrates periods or fasting for example, prior to eating; amino acid and muscle glycogen storage is enhanced, thereby improving muscle building and decreasing storage of excess carbohydrates as fat.

Conclusion, eating carbohydrates all day won’t help you, but consuming the right amount at the right time will dramatically improve muscle glycogen resynthesis (energy), muscle anabolism and fat burning prior to the consumption. Eat low fat, protein and carbohydrates straight after training for maximum muscle uptake, and decrease the carbohydrates for the other periods.

Happy timing!

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