As a san diego personal trainer, I have long been interested in performance nutrition for premier athletes. Sumo wrestlers are premier athletes in japan who often weigh upwards of 400 pounds. What follows is a comparison of the daily eating patterns of a sumo wrestler and your average person living in America. The irony lies in the fact that the Sumo Wrestler is trying to put on as much weight as possible for competitive advantage, and the average person in America is trying to shed some weight to improve their health and fitness.

Breakfast:

Sumo Wrestler – Purposefully skips breakfast.

Average American – Commonly misses breakfast.

Mid-Morning Snack:

Sumo Wrestler – None

Average American – None

Lunch:

Sumo Wrestler – Eats as much as he possibly can and then takes a nap.

Average American – Is usually very hungry from missing or having a very small, quick breakfast, and in turn, eats a large lunch and then heads back to the office desk for work.

Mid-Afternoon Snack:

Sumo Wrestler – None

Average American – None

Dinner:

Sumo Wrestler – Eats as much as he possibly can within a couple of hours of going to sleep for the night.

Average American – Eats a large dinner and sits down to watch TV or use the computer for a few hours before going to bed.

The pattern in which you eat influences the instructions that your hormones give your body. Your hormones tell your body whether to burn fat for energy or store fat for later use. Sumo wrestlers have long manipulated this phenomenon to their advantage.

Unfortunately, many of us have unknowingly fallen into an eating pattern that closely resembles that of the sumo. Tune into next week’s post for how to eat in a manner that sets you up for weight loss success.

Not too long ago as I stood in the checkout line at Whole Foods watching my groceries being scanned and bagged, I glanced behind me at the pleasant looking woman placing her food items down for purchase. As a San Diego personal trainer interested in nutrition, I must confess that I took a particular interest in what she was buying:  frozen soy veggie burgers, brown rice pasta, millet bread, and corn tortillas painted a very clear portrait of someone who was making a strong effort to eat well, and to eat gluten-free. But was she really achieving her goals with those food choices?

Gluten intolerance is a condition that is gaining a lot of attention, and many people are wondering if they are affected by it.  Gluten intolerance is an allergic reaction to gluten, a protein present in wheat, spelt, barley, rye, and some oats. It expresses itself in a wide range of symptoms including constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, fatigue, and joint pain. The effects of a gluten-rich diet often build up over time, and are difficult to detect for those with sensitivities. The best way to determine if you would be better off without gluten is to remove it from your eating pattern and notice if your symptoms go away.

This heightened awareness of gluten sensitivity in people has spawned an increase in gluten-free products and the packaging makeover of many items that are naturally gluten-free to emphasize their “gluten-freeness”. While neither of these marketing efforts are necessarily a problem, confusion arises when the term “gluten-free” becomes equated with the term “healthy nutrition“.  The reality is that not all gluten-free products are good for you.

Why is this?  Let’s take another look at the groceries the woman behind me at the grocery store was buying.  Each of the products I listed – frozen soy veggie burgers, brown rice pasta, millet bread and corn tortillas – all are highly processed foods that have lost most of their nutritional value.  They have very little real food left in them. Let’s face it -  the reality is that processed food is processed food regardless of whether or not it has gluten in it. To truly achieve your healthiest potential, you need to develop an eating pattern full of nutrient-dense, whole foods that align with your body’s unique metabolic needs.

So next time you pick up a gluten-free food, ask yourself two questions. (1) Does this food exist in nature in the form that I am holding it in, or is it a combination of ingredients that are still in their natural form? (2) Is this food gluten-free? If the answer is yes to both, you will be on your way to eating not only gluten-free, but healthy as well.

As a san diego personal trainer and nutrition counselor in over the past ten years, I have worked with a lot of clients with many different perspectives. The main difference between those who achieved great success with their health and those who did not is their openness and willingness to change. For most people, it’s not a matter of being able to change, it’s a matter of being willing to change how you go about your day. What you decide to do, where and what you decide to eat, whether you take the time to unwind and take care of your body, if you get enough sleep, if you have belief in yourself, all contribute to how you feel and look.

I recently started working with a client who has the classic profile of someone with every excuse in the book available to her. She is 60 years old, has never developed a consistent pattern of exercise, and needed help with nutrition. Her body fat was in the high 30s, weight 25-35 pounds more than she wanted, and energy inconsistent throughout the day. So what has she done?

She started to eat in alignment with her body’s metabolism, functional strength train 3 days per week, and do 1 day of interval cardio training. In a 6 week time frame, she has lost 5.5% body fat, 5.5 inches, and 9 pounds of fat…..may I repeat…in six weeks!

The key to her success has simply been an openness to change and the willingness to put in the effort.

Through the course of doing a lot of consultations with new clients, I have come to realize how much confusion exists on the topic of how your body changes from strength training.  A lot of people have sat with me over the years who have worked with one san diego personal trainer or another, yet have never been taught how what they are doing actual works. What follows is a simple breakdown of this process.

(1) Caloric Expenditure – When you exercise in a functional setting (an environment where your body has to stabilize itself through movement such as when you are doing a walking lunge), your body is using your movement muscles to move, your core muscles to stabilize your body posture, and your nervous system to coordinate the whole show. The last point is very important as your neurons (nervous system cells) are the most metabolically active cells in your body, so getting off machines and benches gets them involved in the game at much higher level, in turn burning a lot more calories.

(2) Muscle Breakdown – When you perform a strength training program that has been properly designed, and you do so using the proper loading parameters (mainly using the correct loads to reach muscle fatigue within a pre-determined repetition range), your muscle tissue breaks down during each training session. This triggers a growth and recovery process (during which proper nutrition and sleep are critical) of the broken down tissue. During this process your metabolism is elevated because simply stated it requires calories of energy to rebuild and regrow. This effect oftentimes lasts for 2-3 days.

(3) Muscle Cells Are More Metabolically Active Than Fat Cells – As your existing muscle tissue becomes more active and you grow new muscle tissue, your resting metabolic rate increases due to the fact that muscle cells require more calories of energy to be maintained than fat cells. Again, when nutrition is controlled this leads to a reduction of fat cell volume and you look leaner.

I hope this helps to clear up the confusion and give you a better understanding of how functional strength training works. Feel free to e-mail me at craig@truhealthandwellness.com or leave a comment if you have any questions.