How to measure your body composition?

For a very long time, the scale and the mirror were considered to be the best tools to determine your progress with fitness. But due to a rise in psychological syndromes like body dismorphia, anorexia nervosa and bulimia, this has become a bit out dated and definitely not right for some populations.

By now you know the basics on how your body is composed, but to determine the real percentages we need to dig a little deeper into the literature and in some cases, our wallets.

the body mass index (BMI) whit which we can see if an individual is in the healthy weight range, or maybe over or underweight. This methods biggest disadvantage is that it focuses only on the weight of the person and that it doesn’t distinguish between lean body mass, water, fat mass and bone mass.

In my opinion, I would definitely stay away from this method if you are lifting weights or if you are very “number driven” person (number driven – your whole self image is dependent on the number on the scale).

The best and cheapest way to measure your body composition is the skinfold measurement. It is the most widely used body composition test method for assessing the body fat percentage and it is 98% accurate. Just be sure to have the same person doing it, because the results can vary greatly. You can use a 3 or 7 site skinfold method.

3 site skinfold is measured differently in men and women. In men we take the measurements on the abdomen (vertical fold; 2 cm. to the right side of the umbilicus), chest (Diagonal fold; one-half the distance between the anterior axillary line and the nipple.) and the thigh(Vertical fold; midway between the knee and hip).

In women we take the measurements on the triceps(Vertical fold; back of the hand, halfway between the elbow and shoulder), thigh (same as men) and on the suprailiac (about 2.5cm above your right hip bone) location.

The 7 site skinfold is done on the chest, triceps, abdomen, thigh, and on the subscapular, axillar and suprailiac locations.

Even though it is a very easy and an inexpensive method (plus if you have the caliper at home, you can take measurements as many time as you would like) it still has some disadvantages. The results can vary greatly if there are multiple people taking the measurements, due to different experiences. Plus it isn’t the best method for obese or very lean people.

The last one I would like to describe is the Water weighing method. It uses the Archimedes principle of buoyancy to determine the body composition. Fat floats so the more the buoyant the client, the bigger his/her fat reserves are because muscles and bones are denser than water.

This is a great method, but it isn’t accessible to a lot of people due to the magnitude of the equipment involved. You can usually find it in research centers or in universities.

Until next time, stay strong and be kind.

Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/zkgnhw

References:

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwfit/bodycomp.html

http://thibaulta.blogspot.com/

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/bodycomp.htm

The heart #2

Let’s take a look at two other another examples and review what I told you last week. In the first one, we are doing a light jog and our heart rate is around 120 BPM. In the second one, we are running with all our might for one minute and our heart rate is around 170 BPM. If we put that into the equation:

1)                                                                                                                           2) 

Q = 120 BPM * 70mL                                                                                        Q = 170 BPM * 70mL

Q= 8400mL                                                                                                        Q= 11900mL

Q=8,40L                                                                                                             Q= 11,90L

Our bodies are made so that they can adapt to various stressors. Exercising is one of those stressors and when we start to exercise, we slowly increase our cardio endurance. This happens on many planes, but if we just look at our hearts, this can be seen as a lowered heart rate during exercising, due to an increased volume of our heart (SV) (the heart does not need to work so hard if it pumps a bigger volume of the blood).

To simplify this, let me show you another example while doing a light jog after about 3 months of training. SV rises to 80mL, so to pump 8,40L of blood, our heart needs to beat only 105 times per minute. That is a 15BPM drop in a very small timeframe of exercising. So the same cardiac output can be sustained at a lower heart rate and on top of that, it also lowers your blood pressure. But don’t think that this only applies while exercising. The effects of this can be seen even when we are resting.

Now, let’s take a really quick look at our vascular system. It is made out of veins, arteries and capillaries. Veins carry the blood into the heart, arteries carry it out of the heart and the capillaries are where the magic of gas diffusion happens. Gas diffusion is a term that is used to describe the moving of a gas from a higher concentration to the lower concentration.

Red blood cells carry both oxygen and carbon dioxide. When we breathe in, our lunges fill up with air which is rich in oxygen and the red blood cells take it and carry it into the left part of the heart. This happens because our lunges are enveloped in thin, hair like capillaries thus making it easy for gasses to pass from the lungs to the blood stream. That is called the pulmonary circulation. The oxygen rich blood travels through the left part of the heart and to every cell in our body, where again it reaches the smallest capillaries around muscles and other tissues. There, the blood cells give the oxygen to the cells and take carbon dioxide, other gasses, waste, ions, hormones and other things. The carbon dioxide rich blood then travels to the right part of the heart and is then pumped back to the lunges. This part is called the systemic circulation.

So now we already know, that the heart adapts to regular exercise, but what about the vascular system? The number of capillaries rises and creates a bigger surface for blood to deliver oxygen. On top of that, cell organelles that are responsible for energy production – mitochondria rises greatly so now, our bodies are more adapted to oxygen usage. And to make things even more efficient, the number of enzymes in the mitochondria that are directly responsible for creating energy rises as well.

And for the end, let me just summarize all the benefits that enhancing your cardiovascular fitness level will bring you.

-          It lowers your heart rate and it lowers your blood pressure,

-          In increases the size of your heart and improves your cardiac output,

-          It increases the number of capillaries in muscles and tissues like lunges,

-          It increases energy production in muscle cells,

-          It gives you more energy in your daily life.

Until next time, keep strong and be kind.

Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/3pvmhw

How to determine your daily calorie needs #2

Last time I’ve told you all about the basics on how to determine your daily calorie intake. We covered the subject on basal metabolic rate (BMR) and active metabolic rate (AMR). The first one tells you how much energy your body needs just to survive during the day if you aren’t physically active (if you would just lay in your bed the whole day), and the other tells you how much energy you need if you go around your day (if you remember, I used a female teacher as an example). They both include all the bodily functions that are constantly occurring in your body (metabolism, heat production, breaking down, building and repairing cells and tissues and others).

Up until now you should have a good Idea on how your body is built. Now the real fun begins. How do we lose the most amount of weight (and when I say weight I do mean subcutaneous body fat) with the minimum loss of lean body mass, water and bone mass?

Let’s take a look back to the previous week at our female teacher, who is 30 year old, 156cm tall and weighs 70kg, but before we can determine on how she should lose weight, we need to understand where she currently is. For this we can use a number of things like the body mass index or any of the body composition measurement methods. The body mass index is not a reliable source for everyone, because it doesn’t differ fat mass form lean mass, bone mass or water. But it is suitable for an average person who just wants to lose weight.

The body mass index or BMI is a way to determine if an individual is in a healthy weight range. It can be calculated with a simple equation:

BMI = weight (kg)/height² (m)

And the number falls into one of these three categories

Underweight: < 18.0

Healthy weight – 18.0 – 24.9

Overweight – 25.0 – 29.9

Obese - > 30.0

Our teacher has a BMI of 28.76, which puts her in the overweight category.

For her to be in the healthy weight range she needs to lose at least 3.86 BMI points which is roughly 9 kg. And it would be ideal, if she could lose 9kg of fat mass and not overall body mass.

If you remember, 1 kg of fat tissue has 7700 kcal so our teacher needs to create a calorie deficit of 69300 kcal during her weight loss. Sure, she could just starve herself, but that comes at a high price, because not only does her metabolism slow down if she doesn’t eat at least the minimum amount of calories per day, she also risks death!

For a person, who has less than 10 kg to lose, I usually suggest a calorie deficit of 500 – 750 per day, but never less than 750 for the risk of slowing down the metabolism. A calorie deficit can be created with both proper nutrition and regular physical activity.

If she creates a 500 kcal deficit every day, she will lose the weight in 138.6 days or roughly 5 months. But if she creates a deficit of 750 calories she will achieve her goal in 92.4 days or roughly 3 months.

Next time I will tell you, how she can do just that, without the risk of damaging her metabolism.

Until next time, stay strong and be kind.

You can calculate your BMI here.: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/metric_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html

Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/v65mhw

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/metric_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

http://cindi-slovenija.net/index.php?option=com_bmi&Itemid=36

Why lose body fat and not just body weight

Do you want to know why most diets never work? Almost all of them are focused on just one thing and that is to lower the number on the scale or to get you into those slim jeans that you have locked in the deepest part of your wardrobe. But, as I’m about to explain to you in a little while, lowering your body weight in the right way is much trickier than lowering it in the right one. But before I say anything more on this subject, you need to understand how our bodies are built.

Our bodies are made out four different “compartments”. Body water, bone mass, lean mass and fat mass. Our weight is nothing more than the added mass of all of the compartments masses.

Body water is all of the water that we have in our body. It’s in every cell, intracellular space, bloodstream, in our brains (70% water), lungs (90% water), joints… The amount of body water can vary greatly during the day from being dehydrated or even chronically dehydrated to retaining water. It also varies during your life.

Like body water, bone mass also varies greatly during your lifetime. It is believed that we reach our maximum between 30 to 40 years. After that, our bones start to lose the minerals in them and the risk of osteopenia, osteoporosis and arthritis rise greatly. The average bone mass for men is 15 and 12% for women.

Lean mass is nothing more than our very own little metabolic furnace – muscles. Muscles enable our bodies to move, they produce heat and they allow our internal organs to contract. It is believed, that the bodies of men are 35 – 55% made out of lean mass. Female bodies, on the other hand, have a lower percentage of muscle mass (25 – 40%). It might seem a bit unfair to all the ladies reading this, but just keep in mind, that during evolution, men were the ones that needed more muscles, because they were the hunters. Women were gatherers and they didn’t need all that wasteful muscle tissue for their activities.

Fat mass is more dominant in women. Let me explain why, before the ladies rip me to pieces. Men have more muscles because in the past, they were hunters and provided protein from animal sources for their families. Women were predominantly gatherers and on top of that, they needed a better isolation for themselves, because they gave birth to children. Women needed to be more protected from the weather for those reasons. Average percentage of fat mass is around 16% for men and about 25-27% for women. Everyone has 2 types of fat in their bodies: visceral fat (it surrounds our organs and it protects them) and subcutaneous fat (underneath our skin. It serves primarily as isolation). Subcutaneous fat is the one that accumulates under our skin and it is the one, that makes us look fat and losing it is the real key to weight loss.

Like I’ve said before, most of the diets out there are just setting you up to fail. While you’re on them you will lose body weight, but most of the weight will come from water and lean muscle loss. The real goal in success in weight loss lies in the loss of fat mass while increasing or at the very least sustaining your lean mass. This can easily be done if you follow a healthy and nutrient dense diet on a daily basis and incorporate aerobic and anaerobic fitness into your daily routine.

No two individuals have the same ratios of these four compartments and that’s why no two people are alike.

Until next time, stay strong and be kind.

Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/aa3mhw

References:

http://www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/Unit/How/FunctionalTeams/Anthropometry/WhatIsBodyComp.html

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html

http://www.theragear.com/article/water.php

http://www.microlife.com/products/weightmanagement/

http://www.freedieting.com/body_fat_gain.htm

The heart #1

Every cell, tissue and organ in our bodies serves a purpose. To understand how our bodies work, we need to go deep into the body, to see and get to know the mechanisms on how to most effectively lose weight.

Optimal fitness performance is something we hear more and more each and every day. The techniques vary greatly, not to mention the diet and rest to exercise ratio (time spend resting versus time spent working out).

Optimal fitness can be divided into three components: cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and flexibility. If you want to achieve optimal fitness, you need to develop all three of the components equally. Today I will focus on the cardiovascular endurance.

Cardiovascular fitness had many different names, which mean pretty much the same thing. Among them are cardiorespiratory endurance or, more commonly known, aerobic fitness. It describes the ability of cardiac (heart), respiratory (lungs) and vascular (blood vessels) system to deliver an adequate supply of oxygen to muscles. No matter what name you use, you can always be sure, that all three of these systems are included.

Let us begin at the base of your lives – the heart. The heart is a muscle that starts working when we are still in the womb and it continues to work until the day we die. The hearts main job is to keep a constant blood flow through arteries, veins and smaller capillaries.

It is divided into four main parts: Left atrium, left ventricle, right atrium and right ventricle. The left and the right sides are separated by the septum, and the atrium and ventricles by valves. The left side pumps oxygenated blood (blood that is filled with oxygen) and the right side transports deoxygenated blood (blood filled with carbon dioxide).

Not to bore you with physiological details too much, I’ll just skip over to the important part.

The heart creates a so called Cardiac output (Q). that is the amount of blood that flows from each ventricle in one minute. If you want to know how much blood pumps through your veins per minute you need to know the stroke volume (SV), which is the amount of blood each ventricle pumps in one heartbeat. Now, If you multiply SV with how many beats per minute (BPM) the heart makes, you get your cardiac output.

Example 1:

When you are resting your heart beats with a speed of around 60 BPM. The stroke volume of your heart is 70 ml. Now, if we put the data in the equasion

Q = BPM * SV

where BPM is 60 and SV is 70 we get:

Q = 60 BPM * 70 ml

Q= 4200 mL

Q = 4,20 L

While resting, our heart pumps a bit more than 4 liters of blood every minute!
I'll tell you more on the function of the human heart next week. 

Until next time, keep strong and be kind.

Picture taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_the_human_heart_(cropped).svg

How to determine your daily calorie needs

As I was searching for literature for this introductory chapter in nutrition, I came across this question: »You've probably heard about calories. Are they good or bad for you?« Now this question had me confused and, quite frankly, dumb founded for a while. Aren't calories already common knowledge? We see them every day and they are clearly written on 95% of the food labels, surely people know what they are.

Immediately I called up a few of my friends and asked them, if they could give me a brief explanation about what a calorie is. To my surprise, none of them could give me a good explanation, even though one is a medical student, 2 are personal trainers and one is a dietitian. All of them are people, who should know almost everything about proper nutrition, especially the dietitian.

What does a car need to run? Fuel, of course. How about our bodies? Our bodies need a fuel source as well, and that fuel comes in a form of food. If you want to know what is a healthy and effective way to lose fat or to bulk up with muscle, you need to know at least the basic on calories.

Weather your goal is to lose or to gain weight, you must keep in mind one thing. Weight loss or weight gain is nothing less than. simple math. Simple addition and subtraction is all you need. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Let me explain what calories are.

Let me make something really clear. Calories (kcal) are nothing more than units of energy and for this part, I’ll just focus on the calories in food. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats have a caloric value, most of us know that. 1 gram of fat has 9 calories, 1 gram of carbohydrates 4, and 1 gram of protein 4 calories. But our food is not just made up from those 3 macronutrients.

Organic acids, polyols, water soluble fiber and ethanol also have calories. 1 gram of ethanol has 7 calories, putting it in the second place, right behind fats, while the other three have less than 4 calories per gram.

[There is a big difference between calories and Calories, but unless you are a physicist, you don’t need to worry much about those. The first one means 1000 calories, because some countries like US and Canada want to make sure, that the food labels are as easy to understand as possible. In the broader context it really doesn’t matter that much how they are written, as long as you know how much energy you are putting in your body.]

Firtst thing that you need to do is to determine, how much energy your body needs during the day. This can be easily done with a simple basal metabolic rate calculation. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) tells us the amount of energy our bodies need just to survive during the course of one day. This can be done with the following formulas:

Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – (6.8 x age in years )

Women: BMR = 665 + (9.6 x weight in kg ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )

Or you can just search for one online, just be sure to type basal metabolic rate formula or BMR formula.

For example, let’s take a 30 year old woman, who is 156cm tall and weighs 70kg

BMR = 665 + (9.6 x 70 ) + ( 1.8 x 156 ) – ( 4.7 x 30 )

BMR = 665 + 672 +280.8 –141

BMR = 1476.8 kcal

So this woman needs to eat around 1480 kcal every day, just to function normally. This is a number that tells us, how much energy her body will burn by itself just by existing.

But as we all know, there is more to life than just existing. We have jobs, kids, friends, we go out, exercise, clean… our lives are not just stuck in one place. And by doing the things that we do, we need more energy (because every move that we make requires a certain amount of energy).

This is why we need to know our active metabolic rate (AMR). AMR is the amount of energy we need to function through the day. It includes everything from our internal metabolism (nails and hair growing, keeping our bodies warm, transportation of different substances in and out of the cells) to our daily actions.

I prefer to use the Harris Benedict equation which states:

1.       If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : = BMR x 1.2

2.       If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : = BMR x 1.375

3.       If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : = BMR x 1.55

4.       If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : = BMR x 1.725

5.       If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : = BMR x 1.9

Let’s go back to the woman in the previous example and say, that she is a teacher and doesn’t move around a lot during the day. So we just take her BMR and multiply that by 1.2

AMR = 1476.8 x 1.2

AMR = 1772.16 kcal

This woman must eat around 1780kcal to be able to function normally through the day and to keep her current body weight.

But this woman wants to lose weight, so what do we do now?

Well, 1kg of body fat (notice how I said body fat and not body weight) has 7700 calories stored in it, and I’ll tell you more on that next week.

Until next time, stay strong and be kind.

Picture taken from http://tiny.cc/wgvmhw

Introduction

For most of my life I have been an overweight person. My eating habits were horrible, I didn’t get enough sleep, I didn’t exercise and I drank heavily since the first time in my mid teens when I have tasted the “joy” of numbing out all emotions with alcohol. It got so bad that when I was 21 I weight more than 125 kilo (fortunately the scale went only to that number, but I think that I weight more than 135 kilo).

There is a thing in taking the easy road. I mean, you don’t have to think about anything other than just sticking to whatever you are doing and just cruise through life on auto mode. But doing that will, for the most part, get you nowhere. Even if you do decide to change something, it is still more convenient to take the easy way and just blindly follow some ones guide. But unfortunately the gained results are short lived and you find yourself back at the beginning of your journey, not learning anything in the process. I didn’t want that happening to me, so I decided to become well educated in that field.

In my six years of studying about sports and clinical nutrition as well as exercise and sports psychology I have seen a rapid growth in overweight and even obese people in my surroundings. Whatever the reason is, there is a big gap between people and the right kind of information that they need. Lately there has been a storm of all different kinds of diets and diet books from the zero diet, alkalizing diet, fruit diet, vegetable diet, ketogenic diet, carb diet, no fat diet and so on and so forth. Trust me, if you start reading more than one at a time, the conflicting information in them will surely drive you mad and want to give up. And even if we do have all the right information in one place, it is still very difficult to stay motivated and very easy to lose sight of your goals. Especially if you don’t see the number on the scale getting smaller on a weekly basis.

I lost a substantial amount of weight due to trial and error. Unfortunately for me, one of my errors was that at one time at around 24 years of age, I realized that a weight of 65 kilo is not healthy (considering I’m 1.83 centimeters tall). At that time I was eating no more than 2 apples a day, and I considered myself lucky if I did not throw up every time I took a bite. I was anorexic and bulimic. To top that off I realized that I have body dysmorphia syndrome. An injury I sustained at the age of 25 came as a blessing in disguise. I managed to get to 90 kilo and am currently in the process of gaining muscle mass and losing those pesky few kilo, that remain on my body.

These are just few of the reasons why I have decided to create this site. I wanted to educate people about healthy weight loss, healthy nutrition, exercising and how to stick to your plan, even when your motivation is low.

So to sum it all up, welcome to my site, where I will try to teach you everything that you need to know about losing weight and keeping it off with great and healthy nutrition, exercises and motivation. 


Picture taken from http://tiny.cc/7nvmhw