Exercise And Fat Burning | What Exercises Shouldn’t You Be Doing

By: Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Today’s talk is going to be on exercise. What’s the best kind of exercise I can be doing to burn the most amount of fat, look good and perform well? This is the question that runs across my desk multiple times per day. I see many patients trying to optimize their body composition. I’ve studied this topic and I applied and used it in my life daily. So with regards to the exercises that I recommend, first thing we should look at is what exercises shouldn’t you be doing.

Long Distance, Aerobic Exercises

I see many people that are into marathon running or doing triathlons and various long distance aerobic types of exercises. If you enjoy these exercises, you’re in good health, and you have no healthy complaints, that’s fine. That’s one thing. But I see many people that are going to these exercises to actually improve their body composition. Such exercises, for the most part, are very oxidatively demanding. This means that it creates a lot of free-radicals which can damage DNA. Another thing is they stress your adrenals out. They make a whole bunch of cortisol and actually break down lean tissue, and break down the muscle.

Being a chiropractic physician as well, I treat many patients with chronic injuries. They do these type of events. They do the marathon, the long distance aerobic. And so, I strongly recommend that’s not the best way to change your body composition and to get optimal health.

If you enjoy, that’s one thing. But a lot of people are just doing it because it’s ubiquitous. Everyone’s running and doing all these different things. And they think, “If I do it, I’ll just benefit just like they did.” And that usually isn’t the case.

Interval + Burst Training

The type of exercise I recommend is Interval with Burst Training. I recommend body contour and burst training. It’s initially starting at a certain level of intensity to get loose, then increasing the intensity for about 30 seconds at a maximal effort. And then, come off that, and do about a 90 second rest and recovery. It should be done back and forth about 8 times. And then follow it up with about a 3-minute cool down.

What this is doing? The ups and downs on a short duration is actually increasing a growth hormone called, growth hormone. And many people actually spend $2,000-5000 a month on growth hormone injections. But by doing the right exercise, you can actually stimulate growth hormone production.

Know more about burst training  by clicking here.

And we look at long distance, aerobic exercise, once you hit past that 40-minute threshold, we’re seeing an increase in the hormone cortisol. And more stress hormones and more adrenalin being produced. One of the main reasons why people tend to conduct this exercise is that they hit the wall at some point, or they get this “runner’s high” that is usually a spike in beta endorphins which are natural anti-depressants.

What Type of Exercise Should I Choose?

When we look at exercise, we have to look at the hormonal implications of these exercises. And the hormones we’re making with long distance, aerobic exercise, tend to be hormones that break us down. These hormones actually weaken our metabolism overtime and cause an increase in oxidative damage, which actually means damage to our DNA.

The exercise I’m recommending are short-duration, high-intensity types of movement patterns to help increase growth hormone and to actually help bring down cortisol.

Outside of that, resistance training can be very beneficial. Especially if you’re doing functional movement patterns which is bending, or squatting, or lunging, or pushing, or pulling, or twisting, and walking as well.

It’s important that we’re using good form with these movements because poor form can actually cause increase injury. And injury means more and more cortisol, which is not good.

Learn more about healthy body composition by clicking here.

Take Away Message

So the key takeaway from this video— working smarter is actually better than working harder. And trying to add in some of the burst or interval training into your workout, cutting down some of the long-distance, aerobic training can improve your body’s ability to burn fat and help put on nicely muscle.

For more information, feel free and visit justinhealth.com and/or email, call the office.

What Is The Best Type Of Exercise To Lose Weight And Increase Muscle?

By Dr Justin Marchegiani

What is the best type of exercise to lose weight and increase muscle for you? This is all dependent upon what your goals are, but if you’re the average person that wants to perform better, feel better and look good naked, than this post is for you!

Why do you exercise???

Hint: It should have nothing to do with burning calories!

One of the primary benefits of exercise is to stimulate the synthesis of healthy aging hormones.  In case you didn’t know, hormones are chemical messengers in your body, that tell your body to burn fat, burn sugar or even put on muscle.  The more you push your hormones in a direction of health, the leaner you are become and the more energy you have. This usually a results of higher levels of growth hormone, testosterone (if your man), favorable progesterone to estrogen ratio (if your a woman), and good levels of thyroid hormone.

Hormones are everything! it’s important to note that most long-distance aerobic exercise stimulates hormones that accelerate aging like cortisol. When cortisol is out of balance, it will stimulate muscle breakdown, which causes you to get fatter and flabbier…  Not a good combination!

How much does diet affect how you look?

I always tell my patients, six-packs aren’t made in the gym, but instead carved out by your spoon.  The extra bit of toning and definition you’re looking to get usually comes from a spot on diet consisting of low toxin, anti-inflammatory and nutrient dense food.  Just like with exercise, it has a major effect on your hormones,  But so does nutrition as well.

The food you eat also stimulates certain hormones. If you find yourself cutting calories, your thyroid hormones will start to drop. What you are doing is telling your body you’re going into a famine, so the body responds by ramping down your energy. The more energy you conserve, the better chance you have of surviving the famine. Does this make sense? your bodies hardwired for survival, but in today’s world we not only need to survive, but thrive!

Eating high quality fat and protein along with adequate calories stimulate thyroid hormone, growth hormone, healthy levels of testosterone, progesterone and estrogen. So remember you don’t eat or exercise to burn calories, you do it for your hormones. Your hormones are one of your best indicators of how you’re going to look, feel and perform!

If I had you hooked up to an IV of insulin all day long you would feel hungry, be too tired to exercise and be craving all kinds of bad food. This hormonal scenario is present in almost all people who are overweight. Most people don’t lack willpower, instead they are lacking a favorable hormonal profile predisposing them for health. When your hormones are balanced, the calories you consume energize you, causing you to be more inclined to exercise and burn fat for fuel throughout the day.

Click here to find out more about your hormones can affect weight loss program

Exercise helps your brain!

Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is stimulated through even simple types of exercise like walking. This is a different health paradigm, as the typical motivation for movement usually are surrounding burning calories

BDNF Benefits:

• Helps protects you brain neurons. This can help decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia and other neuro-degenerative diseases.
• Decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Helps brain neurons development properly and survive longer.
• Improve memory (The pictures below show the extra stimulation in the hippo-campus after exercise, this area is strongly associated with memory).

From the book “The First 20 minutes.”

“The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk – all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active.”

What type of exercise is best? 

I always recommend spending the least amount of time to get the greatest reward in regards to achieving your health goals. When it comes to choosing the best exercise to lose weight and increase muscle; it’s not about working harder it’s about working smarter.

You don’t have to work out 4 to 6 hours a day like the people on the TV show “The Biggest Loser.”   If you can sacrifice 10 the 20 minutes out of your day 3-4 days a week you are golden. Consistency is the most important aspects to anyone’s exercise routine.

Interval or Burst Anaerobic Training: Peak 8 is a popular exercise routine that requires 30 second all out burst, followed by a 90 second walking or resting period. Performing between 4-8 reps is best. At the most, you are only doing the burst routine for only 20 minutes including a warm up and a cool down.

Tabata training, is another type of interval training based off of the work of Japanese researcher Izumi Tabata, who conducted a study initially involving Olympic speed-skaters. The first group in the study involved performing a 20 second burst followed by a 10 second rest period for 8 repetitions 5x per week. The second group did a steady state aerobic exercise session over a 60 minute period 5x per week. The results were as follows.

In conclusion, this study showed that moderate-intensity aerobic training that improves the maximal aerobic power does not change anaerobic capacity and that adequate high-intensity intermittent training may improve both anaerobic and aerobic energy supplying systems significantly, probably through imposing intensive stimuli on both systems (1).

In Summary

The group that only exercised for 4 minutes, improved their metabolism better overall, as compared to the group that exercised for 60 minutes.

This research was repeated again just last year Canadian researchers at Queen’s University. The summary of the study is below.

22 college-aged women did 4 workouts per week for 4 weeks in one of three
groups.

Group A: did 30 minutes of treadmill running at 85% max heart rate

Group B: did 8 rounds of 20 seconds of a single exercise (burpees, jumping
jacks, mountain climbers, or squat thrusts) with 10 seconds of rest between
rounds.

Group C: did nothing (they were the non-training control group).

Results

Both training groups increased their aerobic fitness levels by the SAME
amount (about 7-8%).

That’s right, the short workout finishers (of ONLY 4 minutes) worked just as
well as 30 minutes of cardio!

Shocking? Yes, but that’s not all.

ONLY Group B, the workout finishers style training, also increased muscular endurance in common exercises like chest presses, leg extensions, sit-ups, and push-ups.

Most importantly, this intense but brief training method used by Group B also resulted in greater overall workout enjoyment.

Please read that last line one more time, group B also had the highest level of enjoyment. This is important, when you combine a short duration of exercise follow by a greater level of enjoyment help improve exercise compliance. If you aren’t able to do the exercise, you won’t get it’s benefits!  Who doesn’t have 4 minutes seriously?

The Canadian Scientists concluded that “extremely low volume body-weight interval-style training” will boost cardiovascular fitness just as well as cardio while giving you BETTER improvements in muscle endurance (2).

These type of exercise can be done sprinting, on a bicycle, treadmill, or even done using circuit training or plyometric type of exercises usually done in a gym. The most important thing is this paradigm of training can be applied to almost any type of exercise,  and doesn’t exclude anyone. Anytime you increase enjoyment and decrease the commitment of exercise time, compliance always increases.

Conclusion

I am not a huge fan of long distance or steady state aerobic exercise done hours on end. This type of exercise actually causes your body to expend less calories, in essence slowing your metabolism down. Once you’re off your aerobic exercise routine, the weight starts piling back on. Your metabolism is dependent upon the constant aerobic exercise to prevent the weight from coming back. You essentially feel like you’re imprisoned and it’s only a matter of time before your back to square one. This is not a good long-term solution and takes up a lot of time too.

The benefit from some of the burst movements above come from the fact that they actually increases your metabolism. Not only is your aerobic metabolism increased but so is your anaerobic metabolism.  With the shorter exercise time, you’re also decreasing your surges of cortisol, while the same time increasing your surges of growth hormone. Hormonal your body’s primed to burn fat for fuel, while adding nice lean muscle in less time.

Who doesn’t have four minutes to start getting healthy now?

Want to know more about exercises that will help you lose weight efficiently? Click here.

References:

1. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1996 Oct;28(10):1327-30. Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max. Tabata I, Nishimura K, Kouzaki M, Hirai Y, Ogita F, Miyachi M, Yamamoto K.

2. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 Dec;37(6):1124-31. doi: 10.1139/h2012-093. Epub 2012 Sep 20. Extremely low volume, whole-body aerobic-resistance training improves aerobic fitness and muscular endurance in females. McRae G, Payne A, Zelt JG, Scribbans TD, Jung ME, Little JP, Gurd BJ.