What this article will show you is the state of the art about a no-sugar or no “food that act like sugars” (mostly grains) diet and how you can optimize your training and running (or cycling) by sticking to a no-carb diet most of the time. What you will learn is that (at least according to conventional wisdom) is that you have to include some sort of carbohydrate to keep your exercise intensity high.

Recovery

Let’s start at the end, your recovery. The most efficient way to recover from a long exercise bout is to first replace glycogen and then protein. Research has shown that muscles uptake of glycogen is most efficiently 20-30 minutes following exercise. In order to replace this glycogen, you need to eat some form of sugar. This can come in the form of fruits and fruit juices, but fructose (the sugar mostly found in fruit) is not as efficient as glucose so consider a recovery formula (I like the one from Vega).

After you have replaced the glycogen then you should move on to protein. During an hour-long training season, you have lost some protein and you should focus on eating protein to provide your muscles with the building blocks it needs for repair. There is good evidence that eating a diet without sugar or the foods that act like sugar most of the time is helpful at shortening recovery. So, 20 minutes following your exercise you should eat some form of protein like eggs or meat (I like Chili). What you are doing in this phase is giving your body what it needs to function well.

Exercise

In order to understand what you should be eating during exercise, you need to understand what your body considers fuel. When you are at rest, you body will generally use free-floating fats (fatty acids) as energy and this is true when you start to exercise as well. As you increase your exercise intensity, your body will switch from blood fats to using muscle fats called intermuscular triglycerides (IMT). These are the main source of energy to run your muscles. As you further increase intensity, this is when your body will start to use glycogen (this is the form of quick sugar storage in your muscles and liver).

When you get to around 65 percent of your maximum intensity (VO2 max) this is when your body is using about 1/2 glycogen and 1/2 IMT. Things really change when you start exercising at 85 percent of your maximum or above, this is when glycogen becomes the dominant fuel. The body chooses glycogen at this point because it takes less oxygen to burn glycogen than those IMT.

You have probably experienced this if you have ever forgotten to take enough sugar during very intense exercise. As your glycogen depletes, you have to switch to burning body fat, this means you have to slow down because your body is using more oxygen. This isn’t quite bonking, but you feel like everything is uphill.

Review

So to review: if you are exercising slowly, then you don’t need glycogen or sugar; your body has enough fuel to get you around. You also don’t need sugar if you exercise intensely until you run out of glycogen (for most people this is around 1 hour of exercise). When you are exercising at a high intensity for a long time is when you need to keep a constant stream of sugar in your body. Most books will say that you need around 300 calories of sugar per hour for running something like a marathon or longer. If you run longer than a marathon, then you also need to think about consuming some protein.

There is also another trick you should know about that benefits the low-sugar athlete. Most athletes only focus on replacing glycogen, but you can improve your performance by increasing your intermuscular

So while most athletes focus on replacing glycogen, you can increase your efficiency by storing more intermuscular triglycerides (IMT) and this comes from eating low or no sugar and exercising at a high intensity. Yes, this means doing speed work.

I find that eating any sugars tends to make you crave more sugars (I call it the sugar magnet), but if you can focus on using sugar for recovery and using it for only the longest of your runs then being a low-sugar athlete has many benefits.

The last thing I want to say is that what you have read here is the conventional wisdom and researchers only look for what they believe to be normal. It may very well be that not using sugar right after exercise or during long runs may work, but it hasn’t been really tested.

For now, check out The Paleo Diet for Athletes for more information about a low-glycemic diet for athletes.

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You don’t know how to exercise right. If you have ever tried to exercise to lose weight I can almost guarantee you that you were doing it wrong. How do I know that? I know that because most people who exercise for weight loss don’t exercise hard enough or for long enough and (most importantly) don’t understand why they are exercising. If you want to exercise to lose weight fast you need to learn how to exercise properly, let me show you how.

Hard Enough

In order to lose weight you have to exercise harder than you might think. Exercise that is hard enough has two components:

• Sustained Exercise: Exercises such as running or jogging, jumping rope, cross-country skiing, walking, running in place, bicycling, rowing, swimming, stair climbing, and dancing can all be sustained exercises. These are exercises where your heart rate is elevated over a long period of time and you don’t have any time where your heart rate drops. All other exercises (such as tennis, basketball, golf…) allow your heart rate to slow down in between times of effort.

• Intensity: Study after study has shown that exercise intensity is a key ingredient to both increasing your metabolism and exercising for weight loss. While there are many ways to measure the intensity of a workout, the easiest way is to buy a heart rate monitor. In order to lose weight and boost your metabolism you need to exercise at least 70 percent of your maximum heart rate.

While this is a bit complicated, here is how you determine your 70 percent of maximum:

• To find out what your 70 percent of maximum is, you first you have to find out your maximum heart rate. When you have your maximum heart rate, you can then determine 70 percent from that amount. To find your maximum heart rate, use this simple formula: subtract your age from the number 220. The result of your calculation is a good estimation of your Maximum Heart Rate. Now that you have your Maximum Heart Rate, you can compute your 70 percent (if you don’t remember how to do this math, you simply take your maximum heart rate and times it by .70).

Long Enough

Most people who exercise for weight loss don’t exercise long enough. Research shows that you need to exercise at least 20 minutes a day (but more like 40 minutes a day) in order to see some benefit.

Exercising this long is a big commitment on your part, but you can combine exercise with other things that you do every day (such as watching television) to minimize the impact on your schedule. Do you watch a show every night? Then use your stationary bicycle or treadmill while you are watching your show. If you do this after you eat, the benefits will be double (you will be burning off calories that would normally just be added to your waistline, as most people just sit after dinner and you will be getting in your exercise for the day).

The Reason Why You are Exercising

The biggest problem people have when they think about exercise for weight loss is that they really don’t know why they are exercising.

Take a look at the facts:

• One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories
• Walking fast for a mile will only burn off around 100 calories

Who wouldn’t get discouraged after reading that? Here is what you need to wrap your mind around about exercise: You don’t exercise to burn off calories; you exercise to boost your metabolism. Your metabolism (or Basal Metabolic Rate) burns somewhere between 1200 to 1800 calories a day even if you are lying in bed doing nothing.

The focus of exercise is not to burn calories, but to build muscles. This is why you exercise. When you add more muscles to your body it boosts your metabolism. When you exercise hard enough, you also boost your metabolism.

Let me say it again: The key to exercise is to raise your metabolism, not to burn calories. This is how you lose weight fast: exercise hard enough, for long enough and build your metabolism.

Start Slow

Before you start exercising, you should check in with your doctor and remember to take it easy at first. I suggest that you start your exercise for weight loss slow and work up in intensity and length. Yes, you can exercise to lose weight fast; but you just have to know what you are doing.

Note: If you really want to supercharge your weight loss, try the 30 Sugar Free Day Program.

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I have long said that exercise is a panacea and a cure-all, and recent research has backed up my claim. I find it funny to think that Ponce De Lion, the legendary explorer who went off in search of the fountain of youth, actually found the elixir to long life, only it wasn’t a fountain at all, but the exercise he was getting looking for the fountain. Ponce De Lion would have lived a long life if an arrow hadn’t cut it short.

Exercise is a powerful way to change how you feel and it can actually alter or reverse many diseases. If exercise were a drug, doctors couldn’t keep it on the shelf. Exercise is truly the best drug ever, and the incredible part about the exercise story is that this “drug” is free and it has virtually no side effects.

The importance of exercising is summed up well in this quote:

The Global Burden of Disease Study initiated by the World Health Organization included physical inactivity among the most important risk factors threatening global health. A sedentary life style may be as detrimental to health as smoking.(1)

Read that again! That quote is saying that not exercising has the same bad health effects as smoking. Clearly you have to get up off your butt and start moving it around some.

Let’s take a look and see just how powerful of a drug exercise can be.

Health Benefits of Exercise

The research supporting the benefits of exercise is enormous and the following are just a sample of what is out there.

• Cardiovascular Disease: Exercise improves heart function, blood flow to the whole body, nervous system control over the heart, and a technical measurement called endothelial function in patients with heart disease.(2) It appears from a large number of studies that exercise can help prevent heart disease. Exercise even helps people who have had a heart attack, reducing symptoms, complications, trips back to the hospital, and longer life. Not only that, but their quality of their life is better, they have lower depression, and they return to work or active life quicker than people who don’t exercise.⁽³⁾
  

• High Blood Pressure: The good news is that high blood pressure appears to respond best to moderate exercise (as opposed to strenuous exercise). With as little as 30 minutes of continuous exercise a day, patients are able to reduce their high blood pressure. It is important to note that the kind of exercise is important: continuous. Continuous exercise is walking, running, biking and not tennis, golf or even soccer or basketball.⁽⁴⁾ The jury is still out if weight training or high-intensity exercise will help high blood pressure.

• Rheumatoid arthritis: Moderate exercise has been shown to improve the symptoms (less pain) and the functional ability (they can do more) in people with rheumatoid arthritis.(5)

• Diabetes: Exercise has been studied in diabetics for a long time and has been shown to improve blood sugar control and reduce the need for medications. In a new study on the effects of exercise in diabetics, researchers were able to prove that long-term blood sugar control (by measuring hemoglobin A1c) is much better in diabetics that exercise than those that don’t, even when there they didn’t lose weight because of the exercising.(6)

• Weight Loss: As you can guess, exercise and weight loss has been extensively studied. A new study on overweight children showed that exercise helped them (more than adults) maintain their weight loss over a long period of time.(7) This study is so important and demonstrates that exercise can become a habit if introduced early enough in someone’s life. While normal-weight people should exercise at least 30 minutes (moderate intensity) on most days; overweight people should exercise 60 to 80 minutes a day.(8)

• Cognitive function: There is pretty good evidence that exercise will help maintain brain function, including memory, cognitive function, and attention in older adults. Since Alzheimer’s (and dementia in general) are becoming such a health disaster, it is good to know that exercise can be preventive.(9)

• Depression and Anxiety: A prescription for exercise often works better in people with depression and anxiety than taking a drug. New research suggests that this effect may be due to the ability of exercise to help us deal with stress.(10) Who couldn’t use a little stress and anxiety reduction?

What Else?

Exercise has been show to:

• Improve self-esteem, especially in children.(11)
• Reduce the risk for colon cancer.(12)
• Improves our quality of life, especially in older people.(13)
• Reduce back pain.(14)
• Prevent osteoporosis.(15)

Move Your Buns Around

Okay, I didn’t quite tell you the truth above, there are side-effects from exercise and you can hurt yourself; luckily, though, most of the damage you can do is only temporary (unlike some drug damage).

Here is what you need to know to get started on your own exercise program:

• Always check with your health care provider before starting an exercise program.
• You don’t have to kill yourself; moderate exercise is what has been shown to be the most effective for most conditions.
• Start slow and build up to 30 minutes every (or most) days. You’ll want to do more if you are overweight.
• Pick a continuous exercise: this means your heart rate is up for a sustained period. Choose exercise like running, walking, cycling, cross-country skiing and others.
• Consider adding weight lifting into your program.

Most of all, you want to have fun and stick with it. Yes, it can be a drag putting on clothes and getting out the door in the rain and snow, but most people love their exercise once they get going. If you can’t exercise outside, I recommend that you “pay” for the television that you watch by putting an exercise bike or a treadmill in front of the TV.

Take advantage of the best drug ever and start your exercise program today!

Citations

1. Erikssen G. Physical fitness and changes in mortality: the survival of the fittest. Sports Med. 2001;31(8):571-6.

2. Humphrey R, Bartels MN. Exercise, cardiovascular disease, and chronic heart failure. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2001 Mar;82(3 Suppl 1):S76-81

3. Ades PA, Coello CE. Effects of exercise and cardiac rehabilitation on cardiovascular outcomes. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Jan;84(1):251-65, x-xi.

4. Pescatello LS. Exercise and hypertension: recent advances in exercise prescription. Curr Hypertens Rep. 2005 Aug;7(4):281-6.

5. Metsios GS, Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou A, et al. Rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease and physical exercise: a systematic review. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2008 Mar;47(3):239-48.

6. Boulé NG, Haddad E, Kenny GP, et al. Effects of exercise on glycemic control and body mass in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials. JAMA. 2001 Sep 12;286(10):1218-27.

7. Sothern MS. Exercise as a modality in the treatment of childhood obesity. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2001 Aug;48(4):995-1015.

8. Leermakers EA, Dunn AL, Blair SN. Exercise management of obesity. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Mar;84(2):419-40.

9. Angevaren M, Aufdemkampe G, Verhaar HJ. Physical activity and enhanced fitness to improve cognitive function in older people without known cognitive impairment. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Apr 16;(2):CD005381

10.  Salmon P. Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: a unifying theory. Clin Psychol Rev. 2001 Feb;21(1):33-61.

11. Ekeland E, Heian F, Hagen KB. Can exercise improve self esteem in children and young people? A systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med. 2005 Nov;39(11):792-8

12. Trojian TH, Mody K, Chain P. Exercise and colon cancer: primary and secondary prevention. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2007 Apr;6(2):120-4.

13. Stewart KJ. Physical activity and aging. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Dec;1055:193-206.

14. Hayden JA, van Tulder MW, Tomlinson G. Systematic review: strategies for using exercise therapy to improve outcomes in chronic low back pain. Ann Intern Med. 2005 May 3;142(9):776-85.

15. Hingorjo MR, Syed S, Qureshi MA. Role of exercise in osteoporosis prevention–current concepts. J Pak Med Assoc. 2008 Feb;58(2):78-81

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