How to Harness the full potential of Physical Activity

    This is a continuation of my previous blog related to weight loss and management. Let's take a quick revision, we saw there are 3 main factors of weight loss. It is BMR, the thermogenic effect of food and physical activity. We discuss the role and effect of BMR and the thermogenic effect of food earlier, so let's dive into the physical activity part. Do you think physical activity and exercise are one and the same thing? The answer is no. Physical activity happens anytime your body is in motion, voluntary or involuntary. Whereas exercise is a planned movement that is more vigorous which helps you to gain overall fitness. That's why physical activity is a broader concept.

     Research shows that 50% of those who began exercising quit within 6 months. And after 1 year 90% of all exercise equipment is unused. Why this happens? Why can't we keep up with our health commitments? There is a famous saying, "You need to crawl before you can walk" An intense exercise is a great tool if it is introduced properly and customized to meet each person's ability, otherwise it is unlikely to succeed in the long run. There is a very popular misconception among people that they must undergo a vigorous exercise to lose weight. On the other hand, many of us don't like going to the gym and we find excuses to avoid it. Not enough time, too hard, boring, no results, and many more. Many of these excuses are the result of our own, sometimes mistaken perceptions, and logistics. Unless we overcome these barriers, we won't stay with it.

    Physical activity contributes to 25-30% of our daily calorie burn. This key modifiable area of energy expenditure plays a central role in weight loss. There are mainly two types of physical activity. One we call EAT, which is Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and second is NEAT that is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. EAT is the volunteer action and commonly known as exercise or workout. This includes all that we call working out, such as sports, workouts, and jogs.  We all agree that it's a great tool. There are a lot of different options to incorporate EAT into our daily life. It really does matter which way you follow, be it yoga, running, workouts, walking, or jogging. Any and every exercise is good as long as we do it consistently. The key factor is, it should be part of your daily life. Something that you like or else there is a high chance of dropping out of it sooner or later. Despite all these great factors, EAT's contribution to weight loss is not much compared to NEAT. EAT takes up less than 2% of our weekly time, making it less effective. I would like to discuss different forms of exercise, their benefit, and how to incorporate them into our daily routine in much more details later on. First, let's understand the role of NEAT in our life. Why am I stressing on NEAT? Because EAT type physical activity is done at a specific time, whereas NEAT goes on 24/7, all day, all season.

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    NEAT consists of the voluntary and unconscious movements we make as we go about our daily lives. What does sitting, standing, walking, talking, toe-tapping, guitar playing, dancing, singing, shopping, gum chewing, and fidgeting have in common? They are all part of NEAT. NEAT is highly variable, ranging from 15% of total calorie burn in inactive people to more than 50% in highly active people. Similarly, NEAT is hard to measure because it is made up of so many diverse activities. But scientific research shows, something as simple as changing our posture can have a dramatic effect on our energy balance. A mindless motion like fidgeting can raise energy expenditure by 20% more than the resting level. Strolling along with shopping at the mall even at a slow pace adds to energy expenditure. NEAT is a bit like the story of the tortoise and hare. By making small daily choices, you can win the race of weight maintenance and set the stage for exercise at your own pace. 

    Let's dig into a little bit more and understand how can we use this in our daily life. NEAT activities can be categorized into 6 types:

Posture:

Our body needs to align the core axis. To maintain this posture, muscles have to work hard. Which in turn means burning more calories, and it is great training for the body to get ready for exercise. Make a habit of sitting up straight in meeting at work, while watching TV, driving the car. following this for 30 minutes every day can burn 60 more calories every day.

Standing:

Moving from sitting to standing increases your energy consumption by weight-bearing NEAT. Get out of the chair as much as you can. Stand while talking on the phone, stand while preparing meals, washing dishes, watching TV. 2 hours of standing time can burn 120 more calories per day.

Walking:

Here, walking means all those steps we take other than walk as a workout. Keep your daily step count more than 10000. Walk to work, walk to a coworker rather than using a phone, walk while talking over the phone, pass on elevators, and drive-thru. Adding 100 more steps every day and targeting 10,000 steps a day, you can burn 100-300 more calories each day.

Stairs: 

Climbing one flight of stairs is equivalent to walking 100 steps. In this type of NEAT activity, you are actually lifting your total mass against gravity. And hence burn more calories, this is one of the most effective NEAT activities. Stairs climbing is an intense activity, check with your doctors, start slow, pay attention. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, use restrooms on a different floor, stairs at mall or park, stair break instead of a coffee break.10 flights of stairs can burn around 50 calories a day.

Dance: 

Put on a song you like and watch happens. You might start tapping your pencil or foot or even singing. We are looking for music's ability to enhance motion. Whatever gets you moving is a great way to burn calories, especially when it's so much fun to do! By adding music and dance you can burn 30-40 more calories every day.

Switch:

A switch means doing things by hand instead of a machine. Including dishwasher, remotes, computers, and all similar devices. Putting away appliances and doing by hands, washing the car you can burn more calories up to 40 additional calories a day. 

   

Now you know how these small changes can add to our daily calorie burn. This is part of your daily life, you don't have to go to the gym, to work-out this way. And when you combine this power of NEAT with exercise and healthy eating, there no stopping from reaching a healthy weight and living life to fullest.

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Healthy Ice Cream You Can Enjoy Guilt Free

Healthy food not necessarily means tasteless food, with a little smarter change, you can enjoy all your favorite food without feeling guilty, or worrying about losing Heath. Here is one of my favorite foods, Yummy and healthy together😋. We all love ice-cream all time, all season. In this recipe, we will make very tasty, creamy, sweet strawberry ice cream without adding any sugar or creamer(fats). Are you excited? Let's get started then. 

Ingredients

1. 1 cup of fresh strawberries
2. 1 banana
3. 1 cup low-fat milk( if you want to make regular one, you can 
4. replace this with whole milk and fresh cream)
5. 1/4 cup Almond flour or whole Almonds
6. 2-3 Dates
7. 1.5 tsp of Organic Honey
8. A few drops of essence (Optional)

Procedure

• Wash and cut strawberry and banana. Freeze for 4+ hours in a sealed container or ziplock bag.

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• In a small bowl soak dates in little milk. If you are using whole Almonds you can soak them too. I am using almond flour here.

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•  In a blender add frozen fruits, dates, almond flour, honey, and milk. Blend into a smooth thick paste. If it gets too thick you can add 2-3 tablespoons of milk, just make sure the paste is smooth and blended nicely. The mix shouldn't be too runny or loose.
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•  Take all the paste in a closed lid container, give it a nice mix, seal the lid, and freeze it for 4 hrs.

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•  Take the frozen ice cream out and mix It thoroughly. You can blend with a blender if needed. Mixing with hands is ok too, as long as you mix it well.
•  Freeze it again with closed lid for 4-6 hrs. After this, your fresh, healthy, creamy, and yummy strawberry ice cream is ready to enjoy.

This is a baseline recipe, you can replace Strawberry with your favorite fruits and milk with almond milk for lactose-intolerant people. This is one tasty ice cream that you can enjoy all summer, all time. This gives us Vitamin C from strawberries, Potassium, Magnesium, and Vitamin B6 from bananas. Iron, Antioxidants, and Fibers from dates. Healthy Protein, Vitamin E, and Calcium from Almonds. These nutrients are very essential for our health and strong immunity. So, make it at home and enjoy a healthy and tasty Strawberry ice cream. 

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Magic & Logic behind Weight Loss Part-Ⅱ

    Welcome back, health seeker. As promised in the last post, we are going to understand the science and art of calorie burn. Yes, you heard that right, it's art too.

    To lose weight, you need to burn more calories. Our daily energy expenditure consists of 3 main components, BMR, physical activity, and the thermic effect of food. BMR is the amount of energy a body consumes when it's rested or when the body at a neutral state. In other words, it's the amount of energy our body needs when we are not doing anything voluntarily. When we are sleeping, our body still needs the energy to keep our organs functioning like our heart, muscles, and brain. It might surprise you, but this is what the body uses the most energy on, around 65-70% of our total calories burns on any given day. BMR is hard to change, but with healthy habits, you can definitely use this powerhouse more efficiently.

    Maximum energy-consuming organs are brain and muscles. That's why when you increase lean muscles, the body will need more calories to keep up with it. In other words, it means no chances of storing extra calories. Whatever calories you put in, the body will have to burn it to keep up with leaner muscles. Whereas, fat only needs 10% energy compared to lean muscle mass. After the age of 20, we began losing muscle cells and those muscle cells get replaced with fat cells. That means as we lose muscle over the years, our energy expenditure decreases. And when energy expenditure decreases fat accumulation increases.  More muscles, more calories burned, more fat, less energy needed. So more extra energy to store(fats). This might help you to understand that when we say I don't eat anything and I still put on weight. Or someone eats big meals and still doesn't put on weight. Simply because if you have more lean muscles, the body will need more calories to maintain it. Whereas, more fats mean fewer calories needed. Hence replacing fat mass with lean muscles is very essential for staying fit and healthy.

  Similarly, if you give a workout to the brain it will consume more calories. It does not necessarily mean making the brain run a marathon 😃😃 .......The brain is a big calorie burner. It contributes to 25% of your BMR. We can create new neural pathways by just give some change to our brain, simple actions like brushing teeth with a different hand, driving home using different routes, or even as simple as hanging out talking to friends will stimulate the brain and increase metabolic rate. Which, indirectly, means the brain burns more calories. Brain fitness is very simple, anything like reading, writing, crossword puzzles, going to meetings, learning to play a musical instrument, playing video games, or spending the evening dancing. Challenge your brain to learn new tasks, especially things that you have never done before. This is the magic of BMR. Now that we know the role of BMR, its effect on calorie burn, and what we can do to use this powerhouse to get desired results.

     Let's move on to the next component of calorie burn, that is the Thermic Effect of Food. The thermic effect of food basically means the energy we use to digest and process our food. More simply, we can say by knowing the quantity, quality, and physical state of food along with its effect we can make healthy eating habits more sustainable. How different foods impact our energy expenditure? Let's take a hypothetical case, we have two options for a snack. One box we have a cup of carrots with low fat ranch. In another box, we have a glazed donut. Let's be honest there is no comparison ....we all want the second box. Now just see the calorie math behind it. We know donuts have more calories than carrots but that's not all of it. We all know the body spends energy to digest food too. When you take that donut it is going to give your body a free sugar rush for which body doesn't have to work hard. On the other hand, if you choose carrots, the body will have to break those fibers and to digest and will have to spend more energy. So if donut had 250 calories and body used 50 calories to digest it. That means by eating a donut, your body got 200. And if Carrots box gave us 100 calories and the body spends 25-30 calories to digest it. The carrots snack gave us only 70-80 calories. Bear with me, these calorie calculations are not exact, my point here is to explain the difference and impact. Along with this calorie burn, the carrot snack took more time to digest it because it had fibers. That means until my digestive system is done with working on the carrots I will not feel hungry and we will not need to eat for a longer time. With a donut, the body will be done quickly, so we will feel hungry sooner. These are things that change the effect of the food we eat. Now you know if you don't want to put more calories in your body, what food you should choose, and how can our food choices help in our calorie calculation.

    Similarly there many factors that affect the time and amount of energy the body needs to digest. Knowing this helps us to choose food wisely. The body needs more calories to digest protein, fibrous veggies, carbohydrates from healthy sources like whole wheat, we should definitely include these in our diet. A high protein meal burns around 30% of calories to digest it. Meaning having a protein-based meal of 600 calories will spend 180 calories just to digest it. That indirectly means even though you had 600 calories meal you only added 420 calories. By switching to a daily dose of water to cold water you can burn 74 extra calories every day. This how the thermic effect of food impacts our energy expenditure. Eat small but frequent meals, more lean protein, adding natural thermogenic food with cold water are some of the best healthy eating habits one can adopt. By including these small changes in our daily routine, we can increase our calorie burn and facilitate weight loss.

    While we have so many things to get more calories to burn, all we focus on is a few hrs of exercise. Whereas by understanding this science of body's different ways to burn calories we can burn more calories without even stepping a foot in the gym, that too 24/7.

Will continue on the third important component of calories burn which is physical activity level, in the next blog post.

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Magic & Logic behind Weight Loss

    I am writing after a long time today, as we all are in this pandemic situation. As a Health Coach, I get this question so often that in unprecedented times like these, how do we stay healthy? How can we stay focus on our heath commitments? We want our bodies to be at a healthy state to fight this, but at the same time, it is so hard to stay focused on Heath. We all are wanting to be out there or our having much needed social connections. Sitting inside a house, dealing with new challenges and uncertainty... It all takes a toll on health and our Heath commitments. That's why I am trying to answer a few of your concerns and get a clear picture of how we can do it right. Many of us start taking care of our health in some or other way, but then we lose interest, or it becomes impossible to do it every day. If that's you, let me assure you, you are not only one. And as much as it's common, it definitely can be fixed. Once you understand the logic that goes behind it, you will feel like following it is a piece of cake.

    I am going to explain why we fail to stick to our Heath commitment, and how can we overcome this. As we all know Weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight are a big part of a healthy life. Weight loss and maintenance have the same age-old basic principles behind it. You need to check your calorie intake & expenses. As long as you keep your intake lower than you burn, you keep losing weight. Similarly, to maintain a Heathy weight, you just need to keep your calorie intake & expenses equal. Having said that, once you know how much calories you burn in a day, that gives you a blueprint of your intake. One more important aspect of fitness is building healthy eating habits for life. Having your daily calories from good sources like healthy veggies, fruits, protein, and taking small, but frequent meals can give you impressive results.

    So first things first, knowing your calorie burn is important. You can use any device like an Apple Watch or Fitbit or any other device. Get an idea of your calorie burns each day. Once you know how much calories you should be eating depending on what you want, be it maintenance or losing weight. You can plan your daily intake accordingly. Just adjust your intake according to your goal and your calorie burn. The second important thing to break your total intake into multiple meals. Never stay Hungry at any cost, that's a thumb rule. If you are thinking of staying hungry to lose weight. Believe me, it is not going to help. The third important aspect is to watch where your calories are coming from. It is essential to have a major intake of your calories coming from fresh nutrition-rich and healthy food.

    

    Once you settle down with this eating pattern. The second important part is to increase your calorie burn. For that, you need to be physically active. Now that's a big problem. When I said physically active, the things that might have come to your mind are hitting the gym or hours of intense workouts. But hold on, I am not going to ask you to sweat in a gym for hours unless you are a true athlete. Yes working out in the gym is an awesome habit for life. But you can't start your health journey by asking yourself to run a marathon with 200lbs of weight. It won't work that way, no matter how hard we try, or how desperately we want to get healthy. It's like asking someone to go for an advanced college degree without having a prerequisite of a high school diploma. So you should make exercise as part of your daily routine, but only after completing prerequisites of getting healthy. 

    As this is quite a long topic to cover so, I am going to break it in a few parts, maybe 2 or 3 parts. We will dive deep into calorie-burning and how to increase it without going to the gym in the next part of this series. So, stay tuned!

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