Fitness – Catalyst Nutrition

Fitness, gym, Health, Lifestyle, Protein

Why a high protein diet?

Shaun Fitness, gym, Health, Lifestyle, Protein Leave a comment

I was told for years by friends who were gym buffs “get that protein in” and I’d always reply I eat chicken… “that’s not enough” they’d always threw back at me and I never really understood why. What is protein and why is it so important?

As things are now I can’t walk down an aisle in Tesco’s without seeing a Protein alternative to childhood favs, ‘Protein Mars’ or ‘High Protein Shreddies’ it’s almost as though Protein has become the word in health… but why? And why would I advise clients to be on a ‘high protein diet’.

Most if not all the people who contact me for help are looking for one of two things, weight loss or muscle gain and both are aided with a high protein diet.

For weight loss Protein has what’s called a high thermogenic effect which basically means your body needs to use more energy to heat it up and burn through it whilst in your body. Ever had meat sweats after a mixed grill or a carvery, that’s thermogenesis. Your body is literally heating up to work through the food you’ve just consumed, cool right! Also, you get a lot of bang for your buck with protein and per 1g equals 4 calories compared to fats which per 1g equals 9 calories which means more food! 😉 Goooood! Protein is also high is something called satiety which is how boffins in white coats judge how filling something is. So protein burns more calories to consume, allows you to eat more and is more filling and if you ask me that’s perfect for weight loss!

For muscle gain, it’s a little more complicated and comes with certain timing requirements but it’s summed up by something you probably haven’t heard of since year 10 Chemistry, nitrogen. Along with other things like amino acids the level of Nitrogen in your body determines tissue growth or tissue loss. But why am I talking about Nitrogen when I’m rambling about Protein? Well Nitrogen can only be found in protein sources and though our body will happily burn through it, it can not create it itself, it needs to be ingested. By being in a positive balance we grow, but a negative one will mean losing tissue and usually, that’ll be the most expensive tissue in the human body, muscle!

It also helps with many other things, connective tissue, hormones, feeding your brain (literally). Ideally, if you can aim for 1.5g per kilo of body weight you won’t go far wrong.

Fitness, gym, Health, Lifestyle

TDEE – Total Daily Energy Expenditure.

Shaun Fitness, gym, Health, Lifestyle Leave a comment

So TDEE, what is it? It stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure which the total amount of energy (calories) our body uses to function, whether that’s scratching our nose, running to the car or making dinner. Each and every activity our body does requires energy to do so.

The way we expend energy is broken up into three different categories; BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate), NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) and EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis).

BMR – This would be made up of our day to day functions like standing up, scratching our noses, twitching in our seats, etc. Because different people have differing recurring habits than others everyone’s BMR is different. We can hazard a close guess based on height and weight, after all, you imagine having to lift those guns up to scratch your nose… That’ll take some energy to do so. There isn’t really much we can do about this immediately, there is work we can do regarding meal timing, etc. but speaking broadly your BMR is your BMR and is a constant.

EAT – I’m sure you won’t be surprised that this is the energy you burn during exercise. Like most people if you’re into your exercise you’ll have a set regime of time you put to it, maybe 1 hour a day for 4 days = 4 hours a week. If you do not currently exercise this is a great way to supplement a weight loss diet and create a larger calorie deficit and if you are exercising that I would imagine you’ve already hit your max allowance in the gym (After all you still need to have a life!).

NEAT – I’ve left this one till last as possibly this is the most important part of our bar chart! You might have noticed I mentioned in the other two that these were ‘constant’ and what I meant by that was that your metabolism is what it is, we can manipulate it slightly but it isn’t going to change a significant amount. The exercise you do is governed by the amount of time you have spare to throw at it and for most people that spare time a week is constantly the same. NEAT, however, is the one that allows for variation, the one piece that can move up or down on our chart. There is plenty of work going on at the moment looking into how the other two areas (BMR + EAT) effect NEAT but also just how important getting your ‘NEAT up’ can be. That can be things like parking your car as far away from the shops as possible (maybe even as far as your house! … Joking, kind of…) or instead of taking the dog to the end of the street and back going for 5, then 10, then 15 minute walks, building it up each time and this way with each walk building up your NEAT.

Fitness, Health, Lifestyle

What is Starvation mode?

Shaun Fitness, Health, Lifestyle

I’ve seen this thrown around a lot lately, “oh you’ve got to have breakfast otherwise your body will go into starvation mode”. Does this sound familiar? “If you don’t eat your breakfast your body will store fat for when you’ll need it, so if you eat your body knows to let go of those fat stores because it knows it’ll get fed”. It sounds familiar to me, I was one of those folks who used to say it! Forcing porridge down my partner’s neck needlessly. If only I could have said to her “not hungry? Don’t worry about it”.

First and foremost, let’s get this straight out the way… your body does not hold onto anything when it’s hungry! That is just false, nope, not right!

If we look into where the genuine notion of where starvation mode may have come from, there is some correlation that if we were to skip breakfast then we are more likely to reach for something quick and easy on the way into work. Studies have shown that “less health seeking individuals” miss breakfast which means that generally, people who skip breakfast aren’t as concerned with their dietary health of someone who does. But as always, I would never say anything without evidence and this is no different there was shown a study done back in 2015 where they tested just that and the conclusion was the same, after all, it’s just common sense right? (1) However, correlation is not the same as causation, so just because MOST people who skip breakfast are likely to eat rubbish that does not mean that just because you skip breakfast you will eat rubbish.

“But Shaun, what about the children in Kenya they all have bellies and they eat nothing, Debra down the fitness club told me that’s because they don’t enough food and they’re fat!”

Tell Debra to pipe down! Those kids in Kenya are not fat, they’re malnourished, the reason for the belly is they have a condition related to a protein deficiency called Kwashiorkor (oh yes, this boy knows his stuff! Ha).

I’m not saying don’t eat breakfast, I have breakfast every morning and love it! What I am trying to say is you don’t need to if you don’t want to. You should be allowed to make your own choices, the best diet is one you can stick to. You want breakfast then get scrambling that egg, prefer to save those calories and have a bigger evening meal then go for it!

Uemura et al 2015
Bath Breakfast Study – Betts et all 2014

Fitness, Health, Lifestyle, Protein

Personalised Nutrition – DNA or Whey ;)

Shaun Fitness, Health, Lifestyle, Protein

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately on Facebook or Instagram about something called ‘Personalised nutrition’. This is a new trend where companies are offering for a ‘small fee’ (£100 isn’t small to me!) to look at your DNA and tell you exactly what your body needs to achieve certain goals like muscle gain, potential intolerances to food or what “might be making you gain fat”.

Whilst the premise makes sense, I mean after all the things they can do with science now is incredible so why couldn’t I swab a cotton bud in my mouth, send it to a lab and it tells me what I need to do to lose weight. But there isn’t actually any research or evidence to back this up.

In my other life I work closely with scientific researchers at the Imperial College in London (have white coats, goggles, the lot!) and they’re working on some cutting-edge work looking into ‘Personalised Medicine’ again, similar premised, they take some blood from patients and look into how it reacts with certain chemicals determines whether their body would react better to paracetamol rather than ibuprofen for example. It’s a really exciting area of medicine, imagine not having to go to hospitals and not having to hear the words “if this doesn’t help in 3 weeks, come back” they’d know straight away that this would help you, it’d be personalised! However, even this with millions of pounds worth of backing, investment and plenty of boffins working away this is very much in its infancy and will be years away from being able to make a difference.

Personally I now wouldn’t go near these DNA testing kits but in the past I know I would have, searching for answers everywhere and anywhere so if you’re not convinced and want to give them the benefit of the doubt then when you enquire ask them “what guarantee do I get that these results are accurate” I would bet my house on you getting a politicians to answer or one that makes you scratch your end and say “huh!”

Fitness, gym

My Apple Watch says I’ve burnt a million calories.

Shaun Fitness, gym

I was one of those blokes who used to look at my Fitbit or apple watch and say “Bex! Look, 2000 calories burnt today on the cross trainer” and hit up dominoes straight after. As far as I was concerned it was free because of what I had burnt at the gym.

Imagine my surprise when I started putting on weight! WTF!! Burnt 2000 calories and eating 1500 I should be losing weight. It was then that I started looking into what my watch was actually telling me, turns out, not accurate… AT ALL!!!

I wasn’t burning anywhere near 2000 calories, in fact in an hour hammering myself I’d have burnt around 500 calories on that demonic thing. So that’s why I was putting on the love chub, damn it!

Apple Watches, Fitbit whatever it is are amazing at counting your steps and I recommend all my clients to maintain a good step count so those things are fantastic for that. They can judge NEAT really well which is hugely important in helping you achieve your goals. They can help by offering you motivation and allow you to compete with your mates which is always a good thing but asking them to tell you to have many calories you’ve burned during a killer leg session, forget it!

I should never have looked at it as what I had earned, instead of looking at what I had burned. By working out you bring yourself closer to your goals, not working out to allow yourself that treat late at night. That mindset got me nowhere, other than under a mountain of Dominoes boxes.

If you’d like to have a look at what it is that you’re burning during a workout, just walking or day to day a great website I found was www.calorielab.com it’s fantastic (this isn’t sponsored by the way). It just really helps to offer an insight into what you’re doing on a day to day basis.

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Category Archives: Fitness

Why a high protein diet?

TDEE – Total Daily Energy Expenditure.

What is Starvation mode?

Personalised Nutrition – DNA or Whey ;)

My Apple Watch says I’ve burnt a million calories.