At the end of the day, what matters most is calories-in vs. calories-out.  Therefore, the rock-bottom foundation of weight management is knowing how many calories are in various foods.

But KEEP IT SIMPLE!

You don’t need to memorize tables.  You just need to get a feel for which foods are high-calorie and which are low-calorie.  When you learn this, it will hammer home these two vital points:
You can eat low-calorie foods until you’re completely satisfied, and still lose weight.
You can only eat high-calorie foods in very small amounts. This is an absolute fact of life.  It should be carved in stone.  But it’s amazing how many people don’t really get it.

HOW MANY CALORIES CAN I EAT?
Before you learn to count calories, you should first get a sense of how many calories you can eat, without gaining weight.  Here’s a simple but effective way to calculate it:

Active people: multiply your weight by 15.  That’s the number of calories you can eat every day without gaining weight.  (Example: 150 pounds times 15 = 2,250 calories per day.)
Moderately active people: multiply your weight by 13 (at 150 pounds – 1,950 calories).
Inactive people: multiply your weight by 11 (at 150 pounds – 1,650 calories).

This number of calories should keep you from gaining weight, but it won’t allow you to lose weight. Let’s say you want to lose about one pound of body fat per week.  That’s a very reasonable rate of weight loss, which will not trigger the starvation effect of caloric hoarding, and result in a rebound weight gain.  To lose one pound of body fat, you need to eliminate about 3,000 calories, through food restriction or extra exercise.  If you do it with food restriction, divide 3,000 calories by 7 days, which is 428 calories per day.  Then, subtract 428 calories from your daily total.  (Example: if you’re an active 150-pound person, you can eat 2,250 calories, so subtract 428 from 2,250.  It comes to 1,822 calories per day.)

If you choose to lose weight with extra exercise instead of food restriction, you should know that exercise burns about 300 to 500 calories per hour, depending on how strenuous it is.  Jogging, for example, burns about 500 calories per hour, and walking burns about 250.

Therefore, when you combine caloric restriction with exercise – and empower these two elements with cleansing and mental focus – the sky’s the limit!

All the Best in Health!

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Nutrition , Weight Control
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DON’T GO ON A WEIGHT LOSS DIET.
There are 8-10 weeks until Summer - here is the right way to get to the right weight.
Almost all diets start with severe food restrictions, and then later allow people to eat more, once they reach their goal weights, in the diets’ Maintenance Phases.  It sounds sensible, but it doesn’t work.
Ninety percent of all people who try this approach gain weight from it. 
Why?  Because the strategy itself just makes the process of weight management harder:

• It triggers the starvation response of caloric hoarding, causing people to gain weight even when they adhere to low-calorie maintenance phases.
• It creates a psychological feeling of deprivation, which eventually contributes to excessive eating.
• It gives rise to a sense of entitlement, making people feel as if they deserve to eat more than they really should.

Instead, pick a goal weight - something very reasonable - then start eating the amount of food you would eat once you had reached that weight.  Feel free to eat as much as you would if you were trying to maintain that weight.

Why?

1. It’s relatively easy.  You won’t feel as if you’re starving.  You probably won’t even feel as if you’re on a diet.
2. You won’t trigger the starvation response of caloric hoarding.  You’ll continue to burn calories normally.
3. You will lose weight, because you’ll be eating somewhat less food than you are now.  Right now, you’re eating enough to maintain your current weight.  When you eat enough to maintain a lower weight, you’ll be eating less food.

You’ll simply lose weight a little more slowly than if you were on a painful, starvation diet.

Everyone insists on losing weight fast but only because they’re suffering.  When people aren’t suffering, they have plenty of patience.  After all, we all have enough patience to wait the whole year for summer vacation, and for the winter holidays.  We’re all patient enough to wait for retirement.
People are good at waiting.  People are patient.
Of course, they’re only patient when they know they’ll get results.  But you will get results if you use the slow-but-sure approach.  It’s virtually guaranteed.  Stick with a good diet, and you’ll end up with a good body.  It’s common sense.
When you employ this approach, your life starts now.  You won’t have to wait anymore for that magical day when you look at the bathroom scale and say, “I’ve arrived!”  With this approach, you arrive the day you start.  This approach takes the focus off the end result, or product of weight control, and puts the focus on the process of weight control.  That’s extremely valuable, because the lifelong, never-ending battle for a good body is completely about process, rather than product. To begin this process, you simply need to determine your goal weight, and then start eating the proper amount to maintain that weight. 

To figure this out, review the section of a past post entitled “Calorie Counting”
If you do start this today, you’ll find out immediately if you really can be satisfied with the amount you get to eat at your goal weight.  If you’re not satisfied, it’s better to find out now, instead of in the future, after you’ve suffered through a difficult, debilitating diet.  The ironic truth is, your body will actually be healthier, and more physically capable of longterm weight management, if you stay overweight, rather than yo-yo your weight.  The yo-yo effect wreaks havoc upon the glands and organs that govern weight management. 
If you discover that your maintenance regimen doesn’t provide enough food, you can pick a more realistic goal weight, or increase your exercise.
If you try this approach, you can get off the yo-yo cycle of failure. 
It’s within your power, trust me! 
You can start living and approaching your goal today.

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Nutrition , Weight Control
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People sometimes tell me that no matter how hard they work out, their bodies just don't seem to respond. They exercise regularly but still don't lose weight.  These people often blame the aging process.  They complain that they're getting older, and their metabolism is slowing down.

That's generally not the real problem.  Metabolic slowdown is mostly a myth. The rate of the human metabolism decreases by only about one percent every decade.  Furthermore, many of the people who say that they don't lose weight from exercise aren't even old.  They're in their 20's or early 30's.

The real reason for this lack of weight loss from exercise - among both young people and older people - is often because these people have too much stored blood sugar in their systems.  When you have too much stored blood sugar, you tend to just burn blood sugar when you exercise, and not body fat.  You can work out hard, but still be unable to achieve much weight loss.

How to Keep This From Happening
Your body stores blood sugar in two ways.  Some is stored right in the bloodstream.  Other blood sugar is stored in the liver and muscles.  The blood sugar that's stored in the liver and muscles is called glycogen.  Your body burns practically all of this blood sugar before it even starts to burn body fat.

Athletes are aware of this principle, and they try to use it to their advantage.  They often try to build up their levels of glycogen before they compete in marathons, or other endurance events.  They know that when they start running, they'll burn up all the blood sugar in their bloodstream within a matter of minutes, and will then begin to burn the glycogen in their liver and muscles.  Therefore, they want to have as much glycogen as possible.  Eventually their bodies will burn up most or all of their glycogen.  Then their bodies will begin to burn body fat for energy. However, burning body fat for energy isn't quite as efficient as burning pure blood sugar.  It's almost as efficient, but nothing quite compares to oxidizing pure sugar for quick energy.  This drop in efficiency isn't really noticeable to the average person during the course of a normal day, or even a vigorous workout, but it can be noticeable to an athlete in the midst of a long, grueling, competitive event.

Therefore, athletes in long races usually try to postpone this shift to body-fat burning.
There's only one way to do that: by increasing the amount of blood sugar that's stored in the liver and muscles. And there's only one way to increase this storage: by eating high amounts of carbohydrates - because carbs are converted almost instantly into blood sugar, and the excess is quickly stored away.  This well known strategy is called carbo-loading.  When endurance athletes carbo-load before a big event, they can postpone their shift to body-fat burning by up to two hours, or sometimes even longer.  Carbo-loading is a clever strategy - but only for endurance athletes, competing in big events.  For you, it's a disaster.

On a day-to-day basis, you should try to do the exact opposite of carbo-loading, in order to get your body to shift to the burning of body fat as quickly as possible during your workout.  The opposite of carbo-loading, of course, is limiting your intake of carbs.  If you limit carbs, you will naturally reduce your glucose levels in your bloodstream, and the glycogen in your liver and muscles.  You'll then start burning body fat as quickly as possible when you exercise.

This quick shift to body-fat burning will make a huge difference in your body's responsiveness to exercise.  Instead of just burning blood sugar when you exercise, you'll burn body fat.  Instead of exercising for an hour and seeing no discernible results, you'll exercise for an hour and see the difference.  You will, in fact, begin to respond to exercise in the same effective, efficient way that thin people seem to respond to it.

All the Best in Health!

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Exercise , Weight Control , Working Out
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Well. the weekend is here and many of us may go out to dinner - many of us eat out all the time.  It’s just a part of the modern lifestyle. These are the basics to help maintain a balance to dining out.  You would be amazed how simple commitment to simple rules really adds up and pays off!

Rules #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5: Eat like you do at home.  Don’t eat excess calories just because you’re in a restaurant.  If you do, you’ll end up shunning restaurants.  Or you’ll end up overweight.  There are invariably a number of healthy dishes that are served in virtually every restaurant.  Find them.  Enjoy them.  You’ll feel so much better about eating out.  You’ll end up doing it more often.

Rule #6.  Order simple foods. The more elaborate your dish is, the more likely it will be to contain hidden calories.  If you can’t tell exactly what’s on your plate, it will probably be fattening.  After all, why shouldn’t the chef hide cream, butter and sugar in his food?  His only job is to make the food taste good.  He’s not your dietitian or your trainer.

Rule #7.  Skip the bread.  At home, you don’t sit around for half an hour before dinner eating bread and butter, do you?  It’s too fattening!  If the service is slow and you can’t wait to eat, order a salad.  If the bread looks fantastic, have half a piece, very lightly buttered.

Rule #8.  Share your appetizer.  Or skip it entirely.  Appetizers are almost always higher in calories, per volume, than entrees.

Rule #9.  Share your dessert. Or skip it.  You wouldn’t eat a 600-calorie concoction at home, would you?  Great desserts are fun, but like all intense pleasures, they’re best in small amounts.

Rule #10.  Focus on the things that don’t make you fat.  The ambiance.  Your company.  The pleasure of having someone else do all the work.

Remember, dining out can be a very pleasurable, sensually satisfying, and healthy part of your life – it’s your choice.

All the Best in Health!

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Nutrition , Quick Tips , Weight Control
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Good Monday, my One Body, One Life family.  It's December 11th - what I call the Holiday Hump.
If you have been mindful of your nutrition and diligent about your training, well done!  This date is usually when we all start to kick in the shopping and treats and call it a year!
No, No, No!  Don't do it!!!
We have exactly two more weeks and then it's Christmas; three more weeks and good-bye 2007.
Your doing so well - stay with it - you will feel so good for getting through it.
Now the rest of you/us who have been slipping slowly... use this remaining time to tighten things up.
Go out with a bang.  All you have to do is dedicate 30 minutes of exercise for three days straight.
Then take a day off and repeat the cycle again.
30 minutes can be spent on any type of exercise, but the most effective form of exercise is cardio, cardio, cardio.  Just keep it simple, but commit to this cycle.

When it comes to your diet, let's keep it even simpler and not even focus on food, OK?  Let's focus on hydration.  Really try to get your water intake up.  Follow my simple equation:
Drink half your body weight in ounces of water every day.

I know doing this is not easy, but commitment to anything during the holidays - besides eggnog and sugar - is an achievement, and don't underestimate the power of these two simple formulas.

Now, a couple more tips to add if you're feeling the joy pumping through your body:

1. Pick one resistance exercise and add it to the end of you daily cardio routine - but it must be a rep out set - meaning if it's push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, or plias, just do one set but go for it! Go slow and do one giant set. 
2. Start every meal with a bite of protein and try to avoid white sugar as much as possible.

Again, all simple stuff but powerful results for both the body and the mind.
All the best in health!

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Holidays , Motivation , Nutrition , Weight Control
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So many of us get into a work routine, sleep routine, workout routine, and eating routine.  Good or bad we seem to follow patterns.  If your weight or energy is not where you want it to be and you have been working out hard and eating well, here is a "shake up" that might help!

First, draw a picture of a clock and draw on the face blocks of time representing these categories: work, sleep, working out, and major eating times.

Next, see how you can create a new clock.  Here are some hints:

• Try to eat as early as possible and try to stop eating as early as possible.  Meaning early breakfast and early dinner!

• Try to get active or workout as early as possible. 
• On the flip side, try to get to bed, read a book, be calm, and sleep as early as possible.

I have my clients try this life change exercise and they find that it’s tough! 
I try to have them follow the sun.  When it's up they are up, and when it’s down they are down. 
What this does is max out your metabolism, and your metabolism is the place to start when you want to lose weight!
See if this new pattern is possible for you; see if this may actually be your natural body rhythm - an important aspect of your existence you never thought or knew you had! 
Even if this is not "life style friendly" for you, this temporary new pattern will shake things up, help get you out of your routine and into a new metabolic sync and into a place where fat burning occurs!
All the best in health!

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Motivation , Weight Control
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This next Q and A comes from a comment I received about my post earlier this week on workout time and weight loss:

Q:  Greg, Hello! Quick question...most guys want to get larger.  I'm the opposite, I was into bodybuilding and want to get smaller and leaner.  I would like more of a David Beckham physique.  Is this possible? Thanks for your time.
-Chuck

A:  Hi, Chuck - Yeah, I have received a lot of these questions lately about getting lean.  I'm not sure of your age, Chuck, but since you are an experienced body builder, you probably have a lot of leftover muscle to work with, which can help to create a really nice, lean physique if that's the way you want to go.  The question you need to answer is how long ago you were body-building (if you have stopped) and how much muscle mass versus fat is on your body now. 
You should do a body composite test to check your percentage of fat.  If your body fat is still relatively low - say, below 15% - then cardio is the key.  But sustained cardio, Chuck!  Like running.  This means keeping your heart rate up for at least 45 minutes (up to an hour and 15 minutes) each time you do your cardio workout. You also want to introduce some kind of stimulation exercise to keep the lean muscle - something like boxing or swimming.
When it comes to your diet you want to go with a plan that focuses on high fiber and good-quality fats.  As for your protein levels - you should try to cut them down as compared with when you were body building.
You want your muscle mass to burn the fat, and then you actually want to burn a little bit of muscle along the way.
Really work on flexibility and most importantly: sweat, sweat, sweat! 
Hope that helps!

I'll answer another question / comment tomorrow.

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Community Questions , Weight Control , Weight Lifting
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Hey, Everyone - I am going to start a new series of posts that I will call "Ask Greg".  You know the deal - people send me questions and I will do my best to provide helpful, informative answers.  Hope you like them - check back each day, maybe one of yours will be answered...

Q: How much do I need to workout to lose weight and hit my target weight goals?

A: Let me answer this question by looking at in in reverse, that is, let's get a sense of how many calories you can eat, without gaining weight - just staying at your current levels - then I will layer in the exercise component. 
So, first let's review a simple but effective method to calculate your steady-state calorie level:

• If you are an active person: multiply your weight by 15.  That’s the number of calories you can eat every day without gaining weight.  (Example: 150 pounds times 15 = 2,250 calories per day.)
• If you are a moderately active person: multiply your weight by 13 (at 150 pounds – 1,950 calories).
• If you are an inactive person: multiply your weight by 11 (at 150 pounds – 1,650 calories).

Again, this number of calories should keep you from gaining weight, but it won’t allow you to lose weight.

Next, let’s set a reasonable target for weight loss - let's shoot to lose about one pound of body fat per week.  I like that target rate of weight loss, because it is one that will not trigger the starvation effect of caloric hoarding, which result in a rebound weight gain.  Here's the guideline: to lose one pound of body fat (in a week), you need to eliminate about 3,000 calories (over the course of a week), through food restriction and or exercise.  That's about 430 less calories a day.  For someone who can only eat, say 1,950 calories a day to remain at their current weight, that's a substantial reduction in daily caloric intake - an amount you would probably notice and miss. 
However, eating less is only one way to eliminate calories.  The other, of course, is exercise - but before you get too excited about the potential for exercise alone as a means to your target weight goals, you need to know that cardio exercise burns about 300 to 500 calories per hour, depending on how strenuous it is.  Jogging, for example, burns about 500 calories per hour, and walking burns about 250.
That means that if you ate just enough calories not to gain weight then, to lose a pound of body fat, you would have to burn 3000 calories, which is about 6 hours of pretty intense cardio exercise or 12 hours of moderate cardio exercise. This is why exercise alone, though critical, is often not enough and it needs to be combined with calorie reduction.  Actually, I think there are more levers to combine with exercise - I think of them as three other elements: Nutrition, Cleansing, and Mind/Spirit.
Together, these combined elements create a synergy of change and if you incorporate them all in a synergistic way, the sky is the limit in terms of your results.

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Community Questions , Weight Control
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You Get Thin From Being
FULL
You should never be hungry.  Ever!  Hunger is nothing more than a disease symptom. The disease is hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.  (Technically, hypoglycemia is classified as a "condition," rather than a disease, but that's just a matter of medical jargon.  The point is, hunger isn't healthy.)

Here are the symptoms most people associate with hunger:

• A strong urge to eat - more than mere desire: a "Need to Feed" response.
• Feelings of physical weakness, or fatigue.
• Difficulty concentrating for extended periods.
• Moderate irritability, or depression.

These are all symptoms of hypoglycemia.  And every time you experience them, your body is deteriorating.

• Muscle cells are dying.
• Brain cells are dying.
• Organ cells are dying.
• Your endocrine glands are being exhausted by having to pump out extra adrenal hormones and insulin.
• You're moving closer to diabetes.
• You're moving closer to overweight or obesity.

This constellation of decline gets a little worse every additional time you get hungry.  It all adds up, over time.  It creates a cascade of deterioration.  To be healthy, slim, and fit, you must keep your blood sugar levels stable.  That means no more getting hungry !

The good news: Keeping your blood sugar levels stabilized feels better than letting them become unstable.  Nobody likes being hungry.  Hunger hurts.

HOW NOT TO BE HUNGRY
Think of your blood sugar as a fire that must continually be fed.  Feed it before the fire goes out.  Don't wait to get hungry before you eat.  Eat just before you get hungry.  You know when you're going to get hungry: about two to four hours after the last time you ate, depending on how active you are.  Eat by the clock, not by the sound of your stomach growling.

The simplest way to do this is just to eat three good meals and three good snacks every day.  "Good" means healthy food - high-protein, high-fiber food that will burn slowly and stick to your ribs.  Keep the carbs low, because they'll burn too fast, spike-up your insulin, and then drop you like a bad habit.

Eating three good meals and three good snacks every day will kill your hunger forever.  If you start to get hungry anyway, eat.  Just eat healthy food.  Not soda pop.  Not a candy bar.  (That also means: Not a "diet shake."  And not a "nutrition bar.")  Good, wholesome food.

The only time you should ever get hungry is if you're out on a hike, or out on a boat, and can't find anything to eat.  Other than that, you should never be hungry.  It's just not how fit people live.

An Exercise in Nutrition
An exercise I often do with clients is to have them set an alarm clock to go off every three hours.  When it rings, they have to eat.  It might just be a light snack, but they have to put something in their mouths.  Obviously, this keeps them from being hungry, and it stops them from overeating.  It's an exercise in consistency, satiety, and good habits.  Try it!  You'll love never being hungry.  You'll love the energy.  And you'll really love the fact that you'll lose weight.

Full entry | posted by Gregory Joujon-Roche in Weight Control
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