Throwing Up Doesn't Necessarily Equal A Great Workout

Have you ever heard this before, "I worked out so hard, I made myself throw up." Some people equate puking with a great workout. You aren't working hard enough if you're not throwing up. I ran track with a guy that would run the 800 and throw up on the back stretch while he was running.

Well, I'm here to tell you that throwing up isn't necessarily a sign that you are working hard.

Example #1

I might have told this story before, but I have a cabin up in Canada that I go to each summer and fish at. I usually don't work out while I'm there, but this particular day I decided to jump in the lake around 4pm and swim. I hadn't eaten anything since 11am that morning. I would swim out 50-100 meters then come back to the dock. Do a bunch of push-ups, then repeat. I did that sequence a total of 3 times. By the third time, I was dead. I felt sick to my stomach, I was light headed, and had that tingling feeling in my head when you feel nauseous. After resting, I went up to the cabin, ate a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and was all better.

Example #2

A client of mine was training with me at 10am one Saturday morning. He didn't live too far from the gym so he jogged there. It was middle of July, so at 10am it was already pretty hot. We did 3 sets of a leg press and two sets of a leg extension before he went to the bathroom to throw up. I came to learn that he hadn't eaten any food the night before, but had plenty of margaritas at the happy hour he was at. Hadn't eaten in the morning and then decided to do physical activity. I bought him a pop and called it quits.

In both cases, the blood sugar level was very low, meaning hardly any energy available. When you start doing activities of that type of exertion, you need energy. If you don't have it, your body will quickly stall out, thus the sick feeling that both examples showed. Notice in example #1, that once I ate some food, I immediately felt a lot better. I got what my body was demanding...energy!! In example #2, not only hadn't he eaten, but he had dehydrated himself with the alcohol plus running in hot weather.

The point is that you can handle intense workouts, if you have properly fueled your body. Even for just everyday activities or fun competition, you should eat balanced meals, with good carbohydrate sources such as fruit, to fuel your body. So, as much as I would like to take credit for you running to the bathroom during our workout session, unfortunately, it is probably related to more of what you had eaten than the awesome workout I was giving you.

5 Ways Eating Better Will Help Your Daily Life

I am a firm believer that nutrition is the key to correcting a lot of life's little problems. We have become so reliant on fast foods and processed foods that we are not getting a lot of the proper nutrients into our bodies. Eating better is a big key when I talk with my clients who want to lose weight. It also plays a part in these 5 items in your life that you might want to pay attention to.

1. Energy - You have seen the ads for 5-Hour Energy or whatever other energy is out there. You know why you need extra energy, because you aren't filling up your energy stores to begin with. Bottom line is food is important because it provides us with fuel for our body. We need a decent amount of food to make it run properly. These low calorie diets provide you with barely any energy. That is like filling up a car with 1/8 of a tank of gas and expecting it to run forever. Eventually, it will just quit and then bad things happen. That is the same with our body. Without food, you can't keep your energy levels up. With food, you will not need any extra 5-hour energy stuff unless you are driving cross-country. If you do need that extra energy burst, ask me about Advocare's Spark. The best product you probably have never heard of.

2. Sleepy During The Day - This falls in line with the "energy" point made above, but a lot of this is related to what you are eating at lunch. Once again, they feel they need the energy drinks to boost them up. Really, they just need to eat a balanced lunch of good carbs, protein, and veggies. This keeps the blood sugar level even steven, unlike a lot of people's normal lunch of either too few calories or very carbohydrate heavy lunches. The carb heavy lunches are usually comprised of a lot of processed sugars, this will cause the big rise in sugar levels, insulin is secreted to get rid of the sugars, it takes all the sugar out of your bloodstream, thus you have the energy crash. Then you want to sleep. Eat balanced and you will be fine.

3. Maintain Your Focus - They have done studies at schools where they exchanged the normal lunches in the cafeteria with healthier choices that also have fruits and vegetables. What they have found is that kids who were deemed ADD or had issues at the school, were suddenly starting to focus better. They were getting better grades and doing their work better. Just think what it can do in your life. Good carbohydrates are fuel to your brain and spinal cord and keep you mentally alert.

4. Help Control Allergies - I picked up allergies when I was 21. Every spring and fall my eyes would itch and I would have this stuffed up nose that would kick up morning and night. When I met my wife, her father was a physician so I would get samples of Allegra to help me out. When I hit 30, I decided to implement more fruits and vegetables into my diet, eat better carbohydrate choices, and have a multi-vitamin. The result has been that I barely notice my allergies and haven't used allegra in the last 9 years. I don't think it is a coincidence that the nutrients in those foods have helped to control my allergies. I'm not saying it will help you against your allergy towards cats, it might. I don't know what I was allergic to, possibly ragweed, but I don't seem to have those symptoms anymore and maybe it will have the same effect for you too.

5. Don't Get Colds or Sicknesses As Often - It seems the worse thing I acquire is a cold. It might last 2-3 days then start to subside. Colds don't hit me as long as they hit the rest of my family. I also haven't been sick in years. I think a lot of that is due to nutrition. Getting the right nutrients in to help build my immune system.

When it comes to health and fitness, exercise does take added time throughout the day to do, but we have to eat. We all take time to eat daily and if we don't we will cease to exist. Start planning on making good choices to eat and these extra benefits can help you too.

Even I Have A Cheat Day

Last year, I had sent out a newsletter that gave a glimpse into a cheat day for me. In case you aren't familiar with the concept, I discuss with my clients having one cheat day where they can eat anything they want. The theory is that it will help keep my client's sanity, plus if you are eating healthy the other 6 days of the week, then one cheat day isn't going to blow your weight loss program to bits.

So here is my cheat day this past Saturday. I will comment on it at the end:

• 6:45am - I had a bowl of Raisin Bran and some orange juice before I went to train one of my star clients, Catherine Adams, owner of Caterina Ltd. in German Village. You should check it out.

• It was OSU game day so I went down to the stadium to tailgate. I arrived at one tailgate around 10:15am and had a egg and bacon bagel sandwich. It was pretty good.

• 10:45am - I arrived at Columbus Academy's tailgate (my old high school) and had another bagel with some hazelnut cream cheese on it and a bottled water.

• 11:30am - I visited the tailgate of another star client, Kathy Manner and her company the Hylant Group. Interestingly enough, I had given a speaking at their company in August about nutrition and eating healthy. So, to celebrate their tailgate I ate 2 bratwursts with ketchup and mustard and another bottled water. This was to give them examples of how to eat unhealthy if you ate this way everyday (sarcasm). My goal at this point was to fill me up so I wouldn't have to shell out a mortgage payment paying for food at the game.

• 3:30pm - The game was a blowout as OSU was crushing my alma mater Indiana, so my buddy and I went back to his original tailgate. There, I replenished my energy with two servings of a pasta salad, complete with some veggies, pepperoni, and some cheese blocks (I don't care much for those). I had some baked wheat thins, plus two slices of coffee cake left over from the morning. I washed that down with some Coke free diet zero something or other. I don't drink pop much.

• 5:30pm - I arrived back at my house to wash up for my 20th high school reunion shindig and threw a couple of handfuls of almonds in my mouth plus a bottle of propel.

• 6:00pm - 9:30pm - Throughout the evening reminiscing with classmates, as I was telling them I was in the fitness industry still, I was feeding my pie hole with 2 more brats, a decorative cookie with our grad year on it, and about 4 of these great lemon squares. I then had a couple glasses of apple cider as well.

A couple comments about my cheat day. I love good, grilled brats. Also, I eat a lot throughout the day anyways. I burn a lot of calories daily so to keep my energy up I have to eat a lot of food. So, this might seem like a lot, but I don't eat just to eat, I eat because my body was craving calories and I needed to satisfy those cravings.

The biggest point though, is I can eat this way because I have EARNED it. My other days, I definitely do not eat like this. I exercise and keep my health in check, so when I have a cheat day such as this, it doesn't affect my body at all. My body can handle this because it isn't a daily occurrence and your body can handle these days as well, if you do the things you need to do on the other days.

So, as the holidays start to come upon us, don't freak out about holiday parties or the Thanksgiving day massacre. You can enjoy those eatings and gatherings as long as you are doing what you need to do on the other days. Exercising and eating right. You do that then you can handle cheat days, not necessarily like mine, but your own version of a cheat day.

Weight Lifting And The Fear Of Bulking Up

There is a huge urban legend that has been around for years. This legend has been scaring many people who want to lose weight off from the weight room. So the legend goes that if you pick up a weight to workout, you will get so big that you will never lose weight, ever. Thus, the "I don't want to bulk up" legend is born and probably running rampant in your town right now.

This hasn't been the first time I dispute this urban myth and it won't be the last, but just because you work out with weights, does not mean you will bulk up. There are a couple key factors why and I will discuss those right now.

1. Testosterone Levels - If you are a female this is a big reason why you won't bulk up, you don't have the testosterone levels to pack on the muscle the way your male counterparts do. So all those lovely pictures you see of female bodybuilders with no bodyfat and bodies bigger than middle linebackers are not created because they just lift weights. They take something called "steroids" that makes them look the way they look. I lift harder and heavier than just about all of my clients and in my prime, I was 190 pounds. I'm a lean 182 right now, but according to this lifting theory I should be 250 and that just isn't the case. But, I'm a male you may ask, I have testosterone, so why am I not bigger. This leads me to point #2.

2. You Don't Eat Enough - You have probably heard me say people don't eat enough to lose weight effectively. If they don't do that, then they sure as heck don't eat enough to create the caloric surplus needed to put muscle on. I have worked with two football players - one trying to lose weight and one trying to gain. The one trying to lose weight did my metabolic nutrition program and because he is so active we found out he had to eat 3200 calories a day to lose weight. He had to make sure to compensate for all the energy he is putting forth for his practices, then he would be able to lose fat. The other football player wants to gain weight. If he is putting forth all that energy (practicing and lifting), then he needs to eat that much more just to gain muscle. Probably around 5000 calories. So, yes you can add muscle lifting, but you have to combine it with eating huge quantities of food to allow your body to create that muscle.

I wish there was more in depth analysis than that, but it is really that simple. I have females that are training with us that are eating anywhere from 1800-2200 calories a day, lifting three times a day, that are losing weight. Trust me, I know they are lifting hard because I'm putting them through their workouts. So, help me try to debunk this awful urban legend. Lifting weights alone will NOT bulk you up.