Daily Health Insight: March 2013

Sunday, March 31, 2013

BuiltLean Digest: March 2013

This has been a big month for BuiltLean: it’s been 3 years since we started, and things have definitely changed a lot since then! From the site design to the amount of content, there has been a lot of work and thought put into making this a site that readers can rely on as a [...]

The post BuiltLean Digest: March 2013 appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

quarterly BuiltLean Digest: March 2013 This has been a big month for BuiltLean: it’s been 3 years since we started, and things have definitely changed a lot since then! From the site design to the amount of content, there has been a lot of work and thought put into making this a site that readers can rely on as a valuable and useful resource and it feels like everything is moving in the right direction.

We’ve had some amazing articles from our contributors, and it’s great to be able to highlight them each month. In March, we had many highly informative & well-written pieces come in, so you’ll find the most shared, rated, and commented on to check out here. There are also a few updates relating to BuiltLean news, as well as comments we wanted to share from our readers.

Most Shared – 3 Reasons To Never Trust Estimated Calorie Burn On Cardio Machines

This article from Pat Koch gives 3 great reasons you should be wary of trusting the estimated calorie burn on machines, and our readers found these reasons instructive enough to make this the most shared article in March.

Most Comments – The Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Yoga

Kristin Rooke’s first BuiltLean article generated the most comments of all the articles we published in March with its interesting information on why Yoga is a great practice to incorporate into your exercise routine even though it may burn less calories than you think.

Highest Rated – Is Grass-Fed Beef Worth The Extra Money?

Should you be paying more for grass-fed beef? Bill Lagakos’s exploration of the research surrounding the health benefits of grass-fed beef scored a 5.0 out of 5 from our readers for its thorough info and helpful suggestions.

NEWS REVIEW | MAR 2013

BuiltLean Turns 3

On March 15, 2013, BuiltLean.com turned 3 years old. It’s amazing how fast time flies when you are having fun and we couldn’t be happier with all the new readers we get each day, our valuable contributors, and consistent effort to publish articles to help people reach their fitness goals.

First Week of Daily Content

This week marks the first week since we launched three years ago that every day from Monday through Friday we posted an article. While we might not have daily content each and every week, we’re getting closer to that point and want to continue publishing a higher volume of articles that deal with what is important to our readers.

Website Restructure

The design changes continued into March to make the site even more accessible: with a new footer, improved home page graphic, article images on the home page, and a consistent color and font throughout the site. We hope you’re enjoying the structure changes as well and that it does make exploring BuiltLean a more rewarding experience.

FEATURED COMMENTS | MAR 2013

We love getting comments from our growing BuiltLean community and we are grateful for everyone’s participation. If one of our articles inspires you to give a little more your next workout, or try something new, let us know. We’ve had some wonderful feedback on articles that have come out this month and wanted to share a few of them.

1) From our U.S. Military Officer Drops From 23% to 12% Body Fat success story, Eric shared his enthusiasm for what following an exercise program can do:

“35lbs in 5 months! That is amazing! I’m very impressed with the result you got. It was really good of Marc and yourself to go through the details. The BuiltLean guide has certainly helped me. Anybody that is willing to follow in your footsteps will get similar results. Success is not an accident!”
-Eric

2) Warren let us know how his fitness progress has been going in Pat’s 3 Reasons To Never Trust Estimated Calorie Burn On Cardio Machines article, and we’re so glad BuiltLean has helped:

“A very informative article, when it comes to loosing weight and tracking your process counting calories burned was very important to me.

I was counting the calories I eat and also the calories I burn, the reason for this was that I would eat back maybe half or all of the calories burned. In the beginning it seemed accurate and was working as I was shedding the fat, dropping pounds and my BF% was dropping.

Where it starts to get difficult is when you hit the dreaded plateau. After tinkering with my diet and trying to accurately calculate my burn I noticed that if I tighten up my diet and record calories I eat more accurately and not bother with eating back the burned amount I will continue to drop the pounds and BF.

So far I dropped 21lbs and reduced my bf% by 8% however I’m finding it harder at this moment in time to keep up with dropping 2lbs a week. I have continued to increase the intensity of my workouts and changed them up and my bf% seems to keep going down (if I trust the machine which calculates it for me.)

This website has played in big part in educating me to do and eat the right things…

Keep it up!”
-Warren

3) Aaron really liked Kristin’s The Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Yoga and made some great points about how our bodies respond to exercise. We’re thrilled he’s recommending BuiltLean as a resource:

“Thanks for posting this. Stress (the negative type) is likely the most overlooked factor in body-fat management. It’s left out of the equation with respect to most exercise. People will always talk about how they “feel” better when they’re exercising. It needs to be brought to the forefront of consciousness that by reducing your overall stress is the most effective way to manage your health.

Our body’s are still built to evade predators with hormones like cortisol which is designed to store deposits of fat in feast or famine environments. We’re wired with biological reward systems that search for the most energy dense foods, you know, like simple sugars.

I’d like to see your feedback on the dichotomous relationship humans have with the sense of taste and the, only recent, availability of foods rich in simple sugars/carbohydrates. I go a big rubbery one when people tell me they would eat healthier if it tasted better. If people understood the self defeating nature of their biology in today’s agricultural climate they may make healthier choices.

Thank you, and thank you for this site. I recommend it to new people daily.”
-Aaron

As usual, we look forward to reading your comments, answering your questions, and hearing your thoughts in the upcoming months as we delve into new topics!

The post BuiltLean Digest: March 2013 appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

The End of Lent: How Did You Do on Your Healthy Resolution?

Now that Lent is over, it's time to tally up your results. Since many people, religious or not, use the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter to test their willpower by giving up something unhealthy - like junk food, alcohol, or couch time - we want to know: how did you do? Sticking to any healthy resolution can be hard to do for six weeks, so if you gave up something for Lent, then let us know if you braved the whole period without "cheating," if you took an indulgence or two, or if you had to quit your resolution for good!

Friday, March 29, 2013

What 100 Calories Looks Like: Easter Candy

Whether the Easter Bunny brings you marshmallow Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, or jelly beans, like Halloween, this holiday surrounds us with delicious, crave-worthy candy. It's only one time of year, so don't hesitate to indulge, but before you do, check out how many nibbles of your favorite Easter goodies add up to 100 calories.

View Slideshow › Here is the full post.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Get Egg-cited Over These Items For a Healthier Easter Basket

Easter is almost here, and for some of us, that means a big brunch followed by a helping of candy - who can resist Cadbury Creme Eggs and marshmallow Peeps? While there's nothing wrong with enjoying a few Easter treats, weighing your basket down with chocolate, caramel eggs, and jelly beans can be the gateway to mindlessly snacking on candy for the rest of the week. Whether you're making a basket for a friend or the little one in your life, keep reading for some healthy ideas to sneak in among the candy.

Photo: Jenny Sugar

Less-processed treats like these healthier homemade desserts:
Vegan chocolate-dipped peanut butter crisp balls
Vegan peanut butter patties
Paleo dark chocolate nut clusters
Vegan carrot cake cupcakes
Decorated hard-boiled eggs to use later in one of these healthy hard-boiled-egg recipes
Spring flowers like tulips, dahlias, or lilies
If you're going to put a little chocolate in your basket, choose antioxidant-rich dark chocolate that's organic or fair trade
Health and fitness magazines, small gadgets, or DVDs
Carrots - they're the Easter Bunny's favorite snack, after all
Pastel-colored fitness gear like headbands, socks, or workout tanks
Especially for kids: books, puzzles, small toys, stuffed bunnies, stickers, coloring books and watercolor paints, magnets, disposable cameras, packets of seeds and gardening tools, plastic eggs filled with glow sticks (to be used later for a glow-in-the-dark egg hunt), Play-Doh or Silly Putty (it even comes in its own egg), or pastel-colored socks
Need a healthier alternative to jelly beans? Try energizing sports chews like Clif Shot Bloks or homemade fruit leather

Friday, March 22, 2013

Comfort Foods Aren't So Comforting

Having a bad day and reaching for “comfort” foods goes hand-in-hand for many women. Angry with your boyfriend, you grab a bag of chips. Your parents are annoying you, you reach for the pint of ice cream. Work stresses you out, you run to the vending machine and buy a candy bar. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. But eating to bust a bad mood may only deepen your funk, a recent study says.

Eating Less But Gaining More

All we ever hear in the news these days is that Americans are getting heavier and heavier and that we have a huge obesity epidemic on our hands. However, according to a survey done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we are actually eating less.

Researchers found that adults’ daily intake decreased by 74 calories between 2003 and 2010, compared to the time from 1971 to 2003 when consumption rose by 314 calories per day.

Building Lean Body Mass: 6 Things That Sabotage Muscle Growth

Are you trying to build lean body mass and not seeing the changes you expected? Don’t give up. Discover six lifestyle factors that can sabotage your ability to build muscle and how to correct them.

Building Lean Body Mass: 6 Things That Sabotage Muscle Growth It’s frustrating when you’re trying to build lean body mass and you’re not satisfied with your progress. Some people are hard-gainers due to genetics. We’ve all heard of the classic ectomorph, the man or woman who stays lean despite eating an all too generous number of calories. Ectomorphs may not put on body fat easily even when they eat a super-size order of French fries, but they struggle to put on muscle too.

There are also people who think they’re doing what they need to do to build muscle but aren’t progressing. A number of things can conspire against you when you’re trying to build lean body mass. Here are some lifestyle and dietary habits that make it harder to get the definition you’re looking for.

Inadequate Nutrition

Nutrition is the problem for some hard-gainers. It goes without saying you need adequate protein, sometimes as much as twice the recommended amount of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, but you also need enough total calories. When you have the dual goal of losing body fat and gaining muscle, it’s a delicate balancing act. When you restrict calories too much in hopes of shedding body fat, you run the risk that your body will break down muscle for fuel as it enters a catabolic state.

Better to increase your calorie intake by eating more lean sources of protein and whole foods that are less likely to end up as fat stores on your thighs and tummy. The good news? If increasing your calorie intake to a more reasonable level helps you build muscle, you’ll get a metabolism boost that helps you shed body fat.

Too Much Steady-State Cardio

If you’re trying to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, you may not be gaining muscle because you’re overdoing the cardio. Extremely long periods of steady-state cardio (an hour and a half or more) increases cortisol levels, especially if you’re carb-deprived. That not only triggers muscle breakdown but it blocks anabolic hormones like growth hormone. Cardio doesn’t have to be lengthy to be beneficial. Keep your cardio sessions short and intense, substituting high-intensity interval training or a circuit workout for an extra long cardio workout. If you do longer periods of cardio, make sure you’re fueling up with enough carbohydrates to keep your cortisol levels down.

Not Lifting Harding Enough or Focusing on Single-Joint Strength Exercises

You’ll have an easier time building lean body mass if you work a maximal number of muscle fibers with each exercise. That means more compound movements that challenge more than one muscle group like push-ups, squats, dips, deadlifts, military press etc. rather than isolation exercises like biceps curls and triceps kickbacks that challenge a single muscle group. You’ll also activate more growth hormone and increase the calorie burn when you do compound exercises. Fifty-percent or more of your exercises should be compound movements.

You need to be lifting hard enough to challenge your muscles to grow. How hard? Use a weight that’s heavy enough that you can barely complete eight to ten reps. You should feel the burn by the last rep. If you’re able to do fifteen reps, you’re building more muscle endurance, not strength and mass.

Overtraining

Muscles need at least 48 hours of rest to repair microscopic muscle fiber damage that occurs with a resistance-training workout. This repair process is important for growth and change to occur. Don’t get overzealous and work the same muscles two days in a row. Give the muscles you worked at least a day’s rest and two is even better, especially when you’ve worked them hard.

Not Sleeping Enough

Just as overtraining makes it harder to build lean body mass, lack of sleep does too. Too much training and too few calories increases levels of the catabolic hormone cortisol – and so does lack of sleep. When you hit the sack early and sleep for at least seven hours, it has other advantages as well. It ensures the pineal gland in your brain pumps out enough melatonin. This antioxidant hormone aids recovery by protecting muscle cells against free-radical damage.

Doing the Same Old, Same Old

To build muscle, keep challenging them. Once you can easily do the eighth rep, it’s time to increase the weight. It’s also smart to change your routine every six weeks to add variety and stress your muscles in a new way. Growth comes from forcing your muscles to work harder than they’re accustomed to and by giving them new challenges, along with reasonable periods of rest. Some ways to vary your routine are to do supersets, drop sets, negative sets, pyramid sets, add some isometric holds or throw in some new exercises. Don’t let your workout become static.

The Bottom Line?

Even hard-gainers can get results from a focused strength-training program, a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition. Don’t let factors you have control over hold you back.

�

References:

Hormones 2003, 2(4):243-249.

Exercise Physiology: Nutrition, Energy, and Human Performance. McArdle, Katch and Katch. (2009)

�

Get the whole story here.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

FitLinks: Can Short Bouts Of Exercise Boost Self Control?

While it might seem like working out drains energy and would make self-control harder, the reality is that the increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex resulting from spurts of exercise may actually increase self-control. The studies show many positive effects of physical exercise on inhibition/interference control, which, as important components of our [...]

The post FitLinks: Can Short Bouts Of Exercise Boost Self Control? appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

man running lg FitLinks: Can Short Bouts Of Exercise Boost Self Control? While it might seem like working out drains energy and would make self-control harder, the reality is that the increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex resulting from spurts of exercise may actually increase self-control. The studies show many positive effects of physical exercise on inhibition/interference control, which, as important components of our day to day lives, means that you could have even more motivation to get to the gym.

We’ve also got interesting news on whether it’s okay to exercise before going to sleep and whether it’s bad for you to exercise in the rain, along with some cool nutrition app suggestions for National Nutrition month. On top of all that, we’ve got an article on 20 indoor workouts you should give a try during these winter-spring months when the weather might not cooperate with an outdoor routine.

Please Note: The articles and videos listed below are informative, popular, newsworthy, or a combination of all three. Just because we have included an article within FitLinks does not necessarily mean that BuiltLean supports, or agrees with its contents or views. If you have a question about our position on any article, please leave a comment and we will be happy to respond!

Sunday, March 3, 2013

4 Simple Tips For Shaping Up For Spring

It's almost bikini weather, so now's the time to start thinking about your shape-up plan. Making a few simple changes to your lifestyle now will ensure you're not frantically trying to crash diet a week before a warm-weather vacation. Read our tips to start today for a safe Spring shape-up.

Debloat and detox: Start recovering from Winter sluggishness now by replacing comfort foods with fresh fruits and vegetables. Drink water with lemon every day, for example, to burn fat and aid with digestion, and make sure every salad contains dark leafy greens like kale or spinach. Read more about 10 detoxing foods you should be eating here.
Lose the belly: It's not so easy to hide a belly behind thick sweaters when the temperatures rise. Begin working on that flat belly now with these daily must dos to get flat abs - like eating blueberries, cutting a few calories, and increasing your cardio workout - in order to shrink your belly and reveal your core muscles.
Focus on legs: Shorts weather calls for strong, shapely legs, so we're all about working our lower body as Spring nears. You don't even have to make it to the gym to get gorgeous gams and a lifted butt: take five minutes out of each day to do a few of these essential lower-body exercises (think squats and lunges) that you can do anywhere. By summertime, your bikini-clad self will thank you.
Write it down: If you're trying to lose weight in time for Summer fun, it helps to build structure with your weight-loss plan. While the above steps will help you burn calories and unearth toned muscles, if your larger goal is to drop a few pounds, start by writing in a food journal every day to record the holes and excesses in your diet.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Get in Shape for...Summer?

tulip Happy March! For those of us who live in cold climates (I'm in Minneapolis) the beginning of March signals the end of winter. Spring is around the corner and then before you have a chance to enjoy the tulips, you're on your way to a summer barbecue. While that puts a smile on most of our frozen faces, it can also create some anxiety. It's time to get in shape for summer.