According to Wikipedia:

Anaerobic exercise is exercise intense enough to trigger anaerobic metabolism. It is used by athletes in non-endurance sports to promote strength, speed and power and by body builders to build muscle mass. Muscles energy systems trained using anaerobic exercise develop differently compared to aerobic exercise, leading to greater performance in short duration, high intensity activities, which last from mere seconds up to about 2 minutes. Any activity after about two minutes will have a large aerobic metabolic component.

A study from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Japan compared the effects of 6 weeks of traditional aerobics training to high intensity interval training.

The aerobic group exercised at 70% of their maximal aerobic uptake for 60 minutes 5 days a week during the study. At the end of 6 weeks the endurance group did not increase their anaerobic capacity and only increased their aerobic capacity slightly (from 53 to 58 ml/kg/min).

The interval training group also exercised 5 days a week during the 6 week trial. Their workouts consisted of 7-8 sets of 20 second sprints, followed by a 10 second recovery. After the 6 weeks, this group increased their aerobic capacity slightly MORE than the aerobics group (7ml/kg/min increase for the sprint group compared to 6ml/kg/min for the aerobics group). The interval training crew also increased their anaerobic capacity by 28%!

Let’s compare total exercise time for the two groups over the six week study:

Aerobics:
6 weeks x 5days/week x 60 minutes = 1800 minutes

Intervals:
6 weeks x 5 days/week x 4 minutes = 120 minutes

So… in less than one tenth the time, the interval group beat the aerobic group in both aerobic and anaerobic improvement!

Hooray science!

If you’re interested in checking out this study, here’s the citation:

Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1996 Oct;28(10):1327-30.
Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max.
Tabata I, Nishimura K, Kouzaki M, Hirai Y, Ogita F, Miyachi M, Yamamoto K.

And here’s a link to the abstract: Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max

Skipping your workouts can mess with your mood.

British researchers found that people who skip their workouts for just 2 weeks had significantly negative moods compared to people who continue with their program.

Skip workouts => Be cranky

It might be because stopping your workouts can cause inflammation and other biochemical changes that lead to mood changes.

What’s cool is you can boost your mood again by exercising.  Another study (from the University of Georgia) found that 12 total sets will increase mood-lifting chemicals in your brain.

Here’s the reference to the British study:

Stress. 2011 Jul;14(4):439-47. Epub 2011 Mar 27.
The effects of exercise withdrawal on mood and inflammatory cytokine responses in humans.
Poole L, Hamer M, Wawrzyniak AJ, Steptoe A.
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK.

Our diets today are incredibly deficient in omega-3 fatty acids compared with the diets we were evolved to eat.

Research suggests that we evolved eating a 1:1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s.  Today, even a very healthy diet will have a ratio of 20:1, with unhealthy diets up into the ranges of 100:1!

Thus, the magic of fish oil and other omega-3 supplements isn’t that they ADD something special – it’s that they bring our bodies back into balance so we can have the health, energy, vitality, and weight we were designed to have!

A review study from the Center For Genetics in Washington D.C. looked at supplementation of omega-3s and found some amazing results.  If you are at all interested in your health, you’ll want to take a look at this:

Omega-3 fatty acids decrease platelet aggregation, blood viscosity, and fibrinogen. This means there is less plaque build-up in your blood vessels, which lowers your risk for heart disease and heart attacks.

Omega-3 fatty acids lower LDL (bad) cholesterol – again supporting heart health and proper blood flow.

Omega-3 fatty acids lower triglycerides in both normal people and people with genetic triglyceride problems. (Check out this post: Drop Triglycerides 93.5% in 21 Days!)

There is either no effect on HDL (good) cholesterol or else there is a slight increase when supplementing with omega-3s, so you don’t have to worry about the added fats from fish oil supplements having a negative effect on your HDL.

From the study: “eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in the form of fish oils along with antirheumatic drugs improve joint pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis; have a beneficial effect in patients with ulcerative colitis; and in combination with drugs, improve the skin lesions, lower the hyperlipidemia from etretinates, and decrease the toxicity of cyclosporin in patients with psoriasis.” Which basically says that fish oil will make almost everything better!

Omega-3s have also been shown to decrease the number and size of tumors (cancer fighting) as well as increasing time before tumor appearance (cancer prevention).

DHA is also essential for the normal functional development of the retina and brain, especially in premature infants.

And one final bit of advice from this study: “Because omega 3 fatty acids are essential in growth and development throughout the life cycle, they should be included in the diets of all humans.”

I personally take both fish oil and the more potent krill oil as my omega-3 fatty acid supplements. For more information on krill oil and a great video explaining EPA and DHA, check this out: Krill Oil Explained

Here is the study reference for my fellow research geeks:

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 54, 438-463.
Omega-3 fatty acids in health and disease and in growth and development
AP Simopoulos
Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health, Washington, DC.

I’ve written about my personal experience with soy overdosing here: Soy, My Nipples, And Your Health.

And a friend of mine just sent me this study on soy: Soy food and isoflavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic

Researchers looked at “subfertile couples” undergoing treatment at fertility clinics and found that there is an inverse relationship between soy intake and sperm concentration.

Translation: The more soy you eat, the lower your sperm count.

Uh-oh.

Soy’s natural defense against being eaten isn’t thorns or poison, it’s much more subtle than that.  When a soy plant is eaten, it makes the animal (humans in this case) sterile to prevent any future eating.

Diabolical, isn’t it!

So the take-home message for today is: Soy really messes up your health.

If you want to find more studies on soy, google any of the abstracts on this page: Survey Says… Soy Is Bad News!

Ok, today’s scien-tastic study will really appeal to you if you’re pressed for time to work out.  (And who isn’t?!?)

Researchers from McMaster University in Canada compared low volume sprint (interval) training to high volume aerobic (endurance) training.

Without bogging down in too many details (I’ll link to the study at the bottom of this post), the aerobics group worked out at 65% of their maximal oxygen uptake for 40-60 minutes, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks.

The interval training group did 4-6 “all out” 30 second sprints with 4.5 minutes rest between sprints, 3 days a week, for 6 weeks.

Total training time for the aerobic group was 4.5 hours per week.  Total for the interval training group was 1.5 hours per week (with 90% of that time being rest!!).

After the six weeks both groups showed the SAME metabolic changes!

Now, I would have expected the interval training group to be burning more fat, but even though the results were the same, look at the total training time!  90 minutes a week of interval training gave the same fat loss benefits as 270 minutes of aerobics training!

That’s pretty freakin’ cool

So, if you want to save time in the gym, start hitting some intervals.  Here’s a step-by-step plan to get you started: Interval Training For Fat Loss

Here’s the citation for today’s study:

J Physiol. 2008 January 1; 586(Pt 1): 151–160.
Published online 2007 November 8.
Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans
Kirsten A Burgomaster,1 Krista R Howarth,1 Stuart M Phillips,1 Mark Rakobowchuk,1 Maureen J MacDonald,1 Sean L McGee,2 and Martin J Gibala1

And here’s a link to the abstract: Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans

Pterostilbene is a chemical related to reservatol that is found in blueberries and grapes.

Reservatol is being heralded in the media as a magic health potion – that’s one of the reasons that red wine is good for you.

But is there something better than reservatol when it comes to preventing cancer?

A study from the National Kaohsiung Marine University in Taiwain says there is…

Researchers compared reservatol and pterostilbene’s effects on antioxidant signalling pathways for the purposes of cancer prevention.

Both chemicals “significantly enhanced expression of antioxidant enzymes.”

Both chemicals block cellular inflammation and and oxidative stress. (By the way, cellular inflammation and oxidation may be the cause of most modern diseases such as cancer, alzheimers, and obesity)

But pterostilbene is more effective than reservatol in reducing the formation of aberrant crypt foci, lymphoid nodules, and tumors, making it a pterostilbene your best choice for helping to prevent cancer.

Here is the study citation (for my fellow science geeks):

J Agric Food Chem. 2011 Mar 23;59(6):2725-33. Epub 2011 Feb 28.
Pterostilbene is more potent than resveratrol in preventing azoxymethane (AOM)-induced colon tumorigenesis via activation of the NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)-mediated antioxidant signaling pathway.
Chiou YS, Tsai ML, Nagabhushanam K, Wang YJ, Wu CH, Ho CT, Pan MH.
Department of Seafood Science, National Kaohsiung Marine University, Kaohsiung 811, Taiwan.

I make sure to eat plenty of berries over the course of a week to make sure I’m getting some pterostilbene, but I really take my health-protection and cancer-prevention plan to the next level by taking a mega supplement.  The one I take is Genesis by Prograde Nutrition.

I have this greens drink every morning at 4:30am right after I have a mug of green tea.  Click the link below for more info:

Prograde Genesis

This is an interesting study that helps to highlight the difference between WEIGHT loss and FAT loss.

(Losing fat will change your appearance and improve your health much more than just losing “weight”)

Scientists at the University of Rhode Island showed that weight training plus diet help seniors lose almost nine pounds of fat, while a diet-only group lost less than one pound of fat in the same time span.

For this study the researchers separated 27 overweight and obese seniors into two groups.  The first group followed the 10 week Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.

The second group followed the DASH diet plus moderate intensity resistance training.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of the DASH diet – there are too many grains and modified dairy products, not enough healthy proteins, and too many fruits and not enough vegetables for weight loss and lowering heart disease risk.  That said, following ANY kind of structured diet will give you better results than just “winging it.”  On to the study results…

Even though the study says there was no significant difference in weight loss between the two groups, look at the numbers:

Diet only: 2 kg (4.4 pounds) lost

Diet plus strength training: 3.6 kg (7.92 pounds) lost

I’d say that losing almost twice as much weight is a “significant difference”!

Time for the body fat loss results:

Diet only: 0.2 kg (.44 pounds) lost

Diet plus strength training: 4.1 kg (9.02 pounds) lost

So… adding strength training to the diet resulted in eight and a half pounds more of FAT loss!

And finally, what were the differences in lean mass gains?

Diet only: 1.4 kg (3.08 pounds) of muscle LOST

Diet plus strength training: 0.8kg (1.76 pounds) of muscle GAINED

Since this study was done on seniors, I just want to point out that lean muscle is extremely important for a higher quality of life.  It is more independence, faster metabolism, less risk of injury, and greater protection from neural degeneration to have more lean muscle.

Oh, both groups improved their 400m (lap around a track) time, but the diet-only group got weaker while the diet+training group got stronger.

What we can see from this study is that purely focusing on diet and “weight loss” is not going to be as effective as diet, resistance training, and focusing on “fat loss.”

Here is the reference:

Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010 Feb 19. Effect of moderate intensity resistance training during weight loss on body composition and physical performance in overweight older adults. Avila JJ, Gutierres JA, Sheehy ME, Lofgren IE, Delmonico MJ.

I remember the morning clearly.  I called my little sister on the way home from the gym and said, “You know that sweet southern girl I was telling you about?  She said the F-WORD during her workout this morning!”

The sweet, slow-talking girl I was talking about is Deirdre Reid, one of my first clients in Carson City:

And the exercise that made her swear?  Negative Chin Ups:

Why do I bring this up?

Well, two reasons:

1. To tell an embarrassing story about Deirdre
2. I needed a way to introduce a study on swearing and exercise

If you exercise hard at all, you’ve probably at least felt like swearing (even if you didn’t out loud )

And here’s something cool: A study from last August showed that swearing helps you tolerate pain!

Stephens R, Atkins J, Kingston A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. Neuroreport. 2009 Aug 5;20(12):1056-60.

The pain from exercise comes from a build-up of lactic acid.  All this means is that you’re exercising and producing lactate faster than your body can remove it, and that’s a GOOD THING.

That lactic acid does make your muscles burn and prompt a few swear words, but it has some cool benefits for your body transformation, such as:

• Increased testosterone production (good for men and women)
• Increased Human Growth Hormone (burns fat and keeps you young!)
• Helps you use carbohydrates more efficiently
• Fuels your brain during exercise

The abstract from the swearing and pain study is, well…. abstract:

Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals’ experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.

Luke’s Take Home Message:

You should be working out so freaking hard that you feel like swearing to relieve the burn!

In a study titled “Body Perceptions and Health Behaviors in an Online Bodybuilding Community” researchers looked at the social reality of members of a bodybuilding forum.

They analyzed forum posts to discover the social constructions, body perceptions, and health experiences of the online membership.

This is from the abstract of the study:

Our results expose an extreme social reality held by a devoted muscle-building community with a fanatical obsession with muscular hypertrophy and any accoutrement helpful in its acquisition, from nutrition and supplements to training regimes and anabolic androgenic substances. Few health costs were considered too severe in this muscular meritocracy, where the strong commanded deference and the massive dominated the social field.

Translation: The forum members were obsessed with muscle-building to the point of ignoring health in the aim of extra muscular size.

So, the next time that you’re reading facebook, a forum, or blog comments, filter everything you read to make sure you’re not being influenced by a crazy person.

(As a side note, I’ve found that almost no one on any forum has anything useful to say, so I completely avoid them)

Here’s the study info:

Body Perceptions and Health Behaviors in an Online Bodybuilding Community. Smith, Stewart.
Qual Health Res July 2012 vol. 22 no. 7 971-985

As a fitness expert, you know I’ll never promise you a pill is going to be the answer to that “jiggle in your wiggle.” If you want six pack abs you’re going to have to work for them.

BUT…

There is some very promising research out there in regards to a dietary supplement you’ve probably been hearing a lot about.

Yes, I’m talking about Essential Fatty Acids. You probably have heard them called something like Fish Oil pills.

How’s this for good news?!

*University of Georgia researchers have found something pretty amazing about Essential Fatty Acid supplements containing DHA. Get this: The actually help STOP the conversion of pre-fat cells into fat cells by causing them to die out before they can mature.

Once a pre-fat cell becomes a fat cell, well, there’s no turning back. You’ve got that fat cell for life. Imagine, actually decreasing the accumulation of fat by taking an Essential Fatty Acid supplement containing DHA!

Now let me do my best infomercial voice for you…

But wait, there’s more!

Seriously, that’s not the only benefit of Essential Fatty Acid supplements containing DHA.

According to studies** done at the University of South Australia people that combined exercise with Essential Fatty Acid supplements containing DHA saw greater fat loss than the test group that only exercised and did not take the supplement.

How can you not be excited by these research studies??

Now, personally, I don’t like Fish Oil pills because they cause you to burp like crazy. If you’ve ever taken them you know exactly what I mean. And they aren’t always the highest quality.

I prefer EFA Icon from Prograde Nutrition because they use Krill Oil. It’s been found to be a superior source of Essential Fatty Acids containing DHA. Plus, with EFA Icon there are NO fish burps. And I haven’t even mentioned all the amazing health benefits from this dietary supplement.

If you’re looking to accelerate your fat loss results than I really recommend you go with Prograde Nutrition’s EFA Icon.

You can try it here => Best Essential Fatty Acid

Yours in rapid fat loss,

Luke Wold

PS – Remember, EFA Icon is NOT a miracle solution. You will need sound nutrition and exercise. BUT the research is there. It’s definitely a supplement with powerful fat loss properties. http:/yourprogradename.getprograde.com/icon

References:
* Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 136:2965-2969

** American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 85:1267-1274