Fat Loss

Clothes fitting tighter immediately after a workout?

Nothing is more amazing than taking a long cycle class or working up a serious sweat at the gym. After a good work out I usually feel and look at least 5 pounds lighter….until I try to put on my clothes. Ever had that experience before? One minute you’ve sworn you’re 10 lbs lighter for all the sweat you just expelled and the next you’re struggling to pull on your favorite pair of jeans that fit perfect just an hour earlier. What gives?

Blood. That’s what.

When you exercise your heart rate increases, we all know this. Your heart rate goes up because your heart has to pump blood to the muscles that you’re using in order to get adequate oxygen to them. Ever do 50 bicep curls and then suddenly you can feel your heart beating in your bicep? That’s because your body is pumping more blood to that area. It’s why your biceps look so much bigger after and during a work out than before. What does this mean? Is the blood making your muscles look bigger? Yes and no.

Everyone knows about veins and arteries – they’re the major highways that transport blood throughout your body. Coming off of these are little capillaries that spread to all the places your arteries and veins don’t reach. When you use a muscle often and build it up you increase the amount of capillaries in that region. The more bicep curls, the more muscle in that area, the more blood it needs, the more capillaries. When you’re not working out these capillaries don’t fill with as much blood as they do during a work out. There’s really no need to – your body is busy sending the blood to your internal organs to help digest food and transport nutrients and oxygen. During a work out your body decreases blood flow to these organs and instead sends it preferentially to your muscles.

So don’t fret if you go for a 10 mile run and suddenly your jeans are so tight you’re worried you’re going to Hulk out of them. Look at it as proof of a good work out. Let some time pass and the blood circulation will return to normal and your pants should fit again in no time.

Struggling to lose weight? Measure your food

So, I’ve already told you that you’re very likely to overestimate the amount of calories you burn. Want to know what mistake #2 is? People tend to UNDERESTIMATE the amount of calories they eat. Even those of us who use diet planners, apps, etc. tend to underestimate our portion sizes. To get deeper into this I carried my camera with me into the kitchen all week and compared perceived portion size with weighed and measured size.

Example One: The Sweet Potato Fiasco

I love these guys and buy about 2-3 at a time. I always pick out the smallest ones in the batch since I don’t really eat the whole thing if it’s super large. When I track them in My Fitness Pal, I tend to log them as “medium” or “large.” Like this –

I ate two sweet potatoes this week and measured them in grams.

Since there was a pretty sizable difference I went on CalorieKing and found calories/gram of a 377 gram sweet potato.

Oh. That’s a pretty huge difference. If I ate the entire potato I’d be underestimating by about 200 calories, depending on the size of the potato. Imagine if I considered it a “small” potato, as I sometimes thought my potato was!

Example Number Two: “Level Scoops”

When people measure peanut butter they say that it’s a LEVEL scoop. This works great for wet products, but what about dry ones like almonds? I decided to see for myself.

1/4 a cup of almonds = 30g. Okay.

Blame the angle, but I could “levelly” fit about 3 or 4 more almonds in there. Not a big deal, unless you eat almonds multiple times a day.

Example Number Three: Cereal

This is my weak spot. I consider a serving of cereal a bowl full and put in enough almond milk to drown whatever it is.

Just FYI, I counted 20 biscuits. Not THAT big of a deal, but again – if you’re stuck at a plateau and nothing is budging this may be why. On the right is 4oz of milk. Yeah, I usually double that. Meaning I’m only counting half the calories. Whoops.

Example Four: Fruits and Veggies

I’m going to use a banana as this example, since everyone’s version of the size of a banana is different. I considered mine “medium.”

CalorieKing called a medium banana 118g.

Not bad! Pretty close! Go me! The issue here? MFP says “medium.” What the hell is “medium”? That’s pretty variable, especially depending on the time of the year.

Take Home Message

If you’re counting calories and not losing weight, it may be your portions. Without measuring, or weighing, it’s hard to tell how much you’re ACTUALLY taking in. With unpackaged food the words “medium” and “small” mean very different things to very different people. I could write pages and pages with picture examples of how this was true for me, but I think this is sufficient. Until you are aware of portion sizes it’s best to measure everything out to make sure you’re not sneaking an extra hundred calories here or there. That’s not to say that you should devote your life to measuring out every tiny bit of food – that’s just silly. And impossible. But if you’ve found that you’re at a weight loss plateau you should look here, because portion sizes are the likely culprit.

Can eating chocolate help you lose weight?

So I heard about this yesterday on NPR and was intrigued. Finally, someone created a controlled study to test whether or not chocolate has metabolic effects like people proclaim! Surely this will settle the score on the thermic effect of food in relation to so called “metabolism boosting foods!”

Nope. Not even.

This is anecdotal evidence where a doctor asked people if they were chocoholics or not and compared their BMI. First of all, we all know how flawed BMI is. My BMI is the same as someone my height and weight, but with significantly less muscle mass than me, or significantly more. Plus, I have a heavier stature than the average human being so my BMI borders on overweight. Yep. I wear a size 2-4 and I’m considered borderline overweight.

ANYWAY.

Cause =/= effect. The conclusion drawn was that people who IDENTIFIED as chocoholics (key word: identified) were on average 5-7 lbs lighter than those who did not. Her caveat is that when a person reached high levels of chocolate consumption they weighed more on average.

My thoughts: everything in moderation is the take home message here. Eating 3,500 calories over maintenance is what makes you gain weight, not certain foods/food groups, etc!

“Negative Calorie” and “Zero Calorie” foods don’t exist

That’s right. Water is the only *real* zero calorie food item (unless you consider air a food, then…well…my bad)

What about Diet Soda/zero calorie sweetener/etc.?

The FDA allows the label of “zero calories” as long as there are less than 5 calories per serving. Go buy a 24 oz diet anything and look at the side. Zero calories per serving, 2.5 servings per bottle. Why not just put one serving? Because the serving size is figured to where it has just shy of 5 calories, allowing it to be labeled as zero calorie. Should you be worried? Not really. Say each of these diet items has 4 calories per serving. That’s 875 servings before you reach 3,500 calories (calories in a pound of weight gained OVER maintenance).

What about -insert vegetable or fruit here-?

These foods are good for you, which is why most diet plans/lifestyle changes/etc. advocate eating them in as much excess as you’d like. Most people cite celery for being extremely low calorie, and it is. However, it still has calories. Bananas have .89 calories per gram, so if you’re ignoring the fact that you eat 300 grams of bananas a day you’re adding almost 300 unaccounted for calories. The same is said of ALL food – just because it is a fruit or vegetable does not mean it is calorie free. 99% of the time, however, it is low calorie and packed with vitamins, minerals, etc. This makes it healthy: not calorie free.

But it takes more energy to chew celery than it gives you!

You don’t think this is accounted for in its calorie count? Or our BMR? Just because celery is primarily cellulose (which humans cannot digest) and water doesn’t mean it is zero calorie, or even negative calorie.AnswerFitness has a great sciency article on why negative calorie foods do not exist, especially not the way we think they do.

Should you count the calories in fruits and vegetables?

This question comes to you from my mother, and a lot of people who send me asks. My mom WAS a yo-yo dieter, and every diet she’d ever been on recommended fruit and vegetables in excess…except some diets swore off “high carb” vegetables. She wanted to know what the deal was with this, so I thought I’d beak it down.

1. There is no such thing as a zero calorie or negative calorie fruit/vegetable/food/etc.

All things have calories. When people say, “Eat all the celery you want, it’s a negative calorie food!” they are wrong. Celery has negligible calories, however, so eating those 5 calories of celery a few times a day isn’t going to set back your weight loss. You gain a pound of weight by eating 3,500 calories over your maintenance calories for the day. This can come from fruit, vegetables, bagels, ice cream, lean meat, etc. One food isn’t going to do you in, the calories will.

2. Why the veggie/fruit free-for-all?

Think about who most diet plans are tailored to: overweight individuals looking to shed 20+ pounds of body fat. Most people who buy into these diet plans/weight loss plans may not have the most balanced meals in the first place. I cannot remember a time growing up when we had fresh spinach for dinner, but rather Cream of Mushroom lathered asparagus that we slugged through together. Most people who go on diet plans don’t eat fruits and veggies in the first place, or they eat one type of fruit (apple) once or twice a week. Giving people “free range” to eat all the fruits and veggies they want will make them fill their gaps of hunger with these cheat foods. Why is this good?

3. Veggies and fruit are super healthy

They pack carbs, fats, protein, micro and macro nutrients in a solid punch. Look at my good food posts – 1 cup of collard greens has almost 400mg of calcium (35 calories)? Artichokes can carry 10 mg of fiber (76 calories)? Carrots are high in vitamin A (52 calories in one cup)? Compared to the calories you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck.

4. It’s harder to OD on calories from veggies/fruit than Honey Buns, bags of chips, etc.

Veggies and fruits come with the solid advantage of being pre-portioned. When you want to eat an apple, you eat one apple. When you want to eat chips, it’s rare that someone portions them out and counts how many chips they eat. When a cup of spinach has 5 calories but a glass of soda can have 160 calories, it makes sense why you’d point someone in the direction of fruits and veggies instead of anything else.

5. “Empty calories” vs. nutritious foods

If you’re filling your hunger void with veggies and fruits instead of diet sodas, chips, etc. there’s an increased likelihood that you’ll be fuller longer. Why? Fiber, protein and healthy fat are touted to keep you fuller longer. Without going into the reasoning behind stretch receptors, signals of hunger, the mental aspect of hunger, we can accept that this is true. Some people will disagree, and that’s fine, no two bodies are the same. In general research shows that if you eat something nutrient dense, like say spinach or an avocado, then the protein, fiber and healthy fat found in it will keep you full longer. Mindless snacking aside, that means less dips into the potato chips in an attempt to fill the void.

So should you count the calories in fruits and vegetables?

Why you shouldn’t

  • Your focus is on incorporating healthy food choices into your lifestyle
  • You’re lacking in nutrients in a certain department and are trying to supplement that with fruit and vegetables
  • Calorie counting and weight loss are not important to you

Why you should

  • If you are stalled for weight loss and haven’t been counting calories from fruit/veggies
  • You eat fruit/veggies 4-5x a day and are trying to lose weight by counting calories
  • You’re interested in learning about portion sizes and want to be able to eyeball what a standard carrot size is, and what that means calorie wise

It’s a complex issue that’s highly individualized. Fruits and veggies are wonderful food that can add lots of micro and macro nutrients to your diet. No one single food group is causing you to gain weight or not lose weight, it’s the excess calories from your overall eating that is doing this. As long as you know your goals you should be able to answer this question for yourself.