Balancing Fitness and Busy Life

Research from the University of Hawaii shows that most of the average American’s annual weight gain occurs between October and February. People simply can’t resist holiday smorgasbords; and even if you fancy yourself a “gym guy,” chances are you can’t either.

We won’t waste space telling you to avoid party treats and decadent meals, because we know you’re going to indulge anyway (we are, too). Besides, the holidays are no time to be pointing fingers. But we can give you some advice to mitigate the damage to your physique, so that you won’t be mistaken for a mall Santa when you go to return gifts in your new red sweater. All you have to do is follow this plan and enjoy yourself.

Budget for binges

It’s a given that you’re going to cheat on your eating, but trying to predict when will help you be more aware of your straying ways, and limit them. There are 39 days in the holiday season between the week of Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Assuming you eat five times per day (including meals, snacks, and workout nutrition), you will consume about 200 meals during this time. As a general rule, you need to adhere to your diet 90% of the time to see results. This means that you need to eat 180 “clean” meals over the holidays, leaving you with no more(or less) than 20 cheat meals.

Now look at your calendar. Plot out as many cheat meals as you can anticipate needing. When is your big office holiday party? When does your family visit? Let big celebrations like Thanksgiving count for at least two cheat meals, since these binges can last hours and easily double your usual caloric intake. Also, try to group your cheat meals into the one or two weeks when you expect to do most of your partying, such as the week of Christmas and New Year’s. Then you can make an effort to be extra faithful to your diet in the weeks leading up to your biggest cheats, when you don’t have as many engagements.

Prepare to party

Even though the point of cheat meals is to stop being a stickler and enjoy yourself, you still want them to do as little damage as possible to your abs. One solution is to eat healthy before you go out so that you simply aren’t as hungry when you’re surrounded by junk later and therefore won’t indulge to the same degree. Never go to a holiday party on an empty stomach. Eat something before you leave that will increase satiety, prevent cravings, and slow the digestion of foods you eat later so you can avoid blood sugar crashes. A salad is perfectOpens a New Window.. A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association showed that eating three cups of salad reduced the subjects’ caloric intake by 12% at a subsequent meal. Need a more portable option? Grab an apple and string cheese. The fruit provides water and fiber, making it a high-volume food that will take up room in your stomach, and the string cheese gives you fat and protein, which is satisfying and slows digestion.

When you get to the buffet table, resist the breads, cookies, crackers, and cakes. They have no fiber, so they’ll do nothing to fill you up, and their simple, starchy carbs cause blood sugar spikes that zap your energy and encourage fat storage. Instead, eat shrimp, smoked fish, cheese, and raw vegetables (and opt for hummus over ranch or blue cheese dressing). Make the centerpiece of your plate whatever main meat dish is being served. Ham or roast beef are high in protein and devoid of carbs.

Where you stand at the party can be as dangerous as the food itself. You start talking with somebody near a bowl of potato chips and, before you know it, you’ve emptied the bowl. Don’t linger by the buffet–engage with people as far from the food and bar as possible.

Time your training

There’s a saying: “You can’t out-train a bad diet,” meaning that no matter how hard you work in the gym, you’ll still get fat if you eat junkOpens a New Window.. This holds true, but it doesn’t mean hard workouts can’t lessen the impact of diet cheats. Whenever possible, train before eating a big meal. Lifting weights increases your insulin sensitivity, meaning that your body has to work less hard to control blood sugar in the presence of lots of carbs and calories. More of the food you eat will be sent to your muscles to replenish glycogen and start the process of recovery, rather than sit in the fat cells around your waist.

Supplements can enhance this effect: Cinnamon extract, alpha-lipoic acid, and resveratrol all improve insulin sensitivity. Consider using probiotics as well. Restocking your gut with healthy bacteria helps you digest extra food.

Another benefit to pre-party liftingOpens a New Window. is in the way it helps you metabolize alcohol. Booze is never a muscle-friendly beverage, but it affects muscle protein synthesis (the process by which your body builds muscle in response to training) worst 24 hours after exercise. This means that you’re better off training this afternoon and drinking tonight than getting wasted tomorrow, just when you muscles are beginning to rebound from your workout.

Whether your goal is to lose weight or get fit, cardio is an essential component to your workout program. You know that cardio is where you burn the most calories at one time and, not only that, cardio workouts strengthen your heart, lungs, and the muscles you're working.

When we first started discovering cardio benefits, steady state training was the norm.

You'd head outside for a walk or run or hit the treadmill and, chances are, you would stay at about the same moderate intensity throughout the workout.

In recent years, that has changed dramatically. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is now the hot ticket. These workouts involve changing the intensity, working harder for certain intervals throughout the routine.

These shorter, more intense workout maximize your results while minimizing the amount of time you have to spend working out.

That sounds great, but is HIIT really better than steady state cardio? Which one should you focus on if you're trying to lose weight and get fit? Even more important, can you enjoy your workouts if you're working at such a high intensity?

The Basics of HIIT

HIIT involves pushing your body well out of its comfort zone for anywhere from 5 seconds to 8 minutes, depending on the workout you're doing.

The idea is to work at about 80 percent to 95 percent of your maximum heart rate if you're monitoring your target heart rate zones, or a level 9 to 10 on this perceived exertion chart, also knowns as your rate of perceived exertion (RPE).

Each work set is followed by a recovery period which can be shorter, the same duration, or longer than the work set. In this interval, you get your heart rate down to about a level 3 to 4 perceived exertion. You alternate the intervals for 20 to 60 minutes, depending on your fitness level, time constraints, and goals.

Pros and Cons

HIIT has a number of benefits, including:

• Improved performance:  Some studies have shown that, while steady state training taxes the aerobic system, HIIT workouts can stimulate both the aerobic and the anaerobic systems. That means your body has more stamina and performs better in all your workouts, no matter what they are.
• It improves insulin sensitivity:  Insulin sensitivity refers to how sensitive your body is to the effects of insulin. The more sensitive your body is to insulin, the less your body needs that insulin to lower blood glucose levels. In terms of exercise, that means your HIIT can help your exercising muscles use glucose for fuel more efficiently.​​
• It helps you burn more calories all day long  One of the best benefits of HIIT is how many calories your body burns after your workout to get your system back to where it was before you exercised. This is also called post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), or your afterburn. The harder you work during your workout, the longer it takes your body to get back to normal, meaning you'll burn more calories for an hour or more after your workout.
• It helps you burn more belly fat:  Even better news is that research is showing that HIIT may be more effective at reducing abdominal fat than other types of exercise.

• It improves your health:  HIIT can help lower blood pressure and improve your heart health.
• Shorter workouts: Because you're working very hard, you get the benefits of training in less time than you would from slower, longer workout sessions. One study published in The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine  showed that as few as three 10 minute sessions a week can make your body more efficient at delivering oxygen to your body as well as improving your metabolic health.

On the other hand, HIIT has some drawbacks, including:

• Can be extremely uncomfortable:  While you can modify the workouts to fit your fitness level, the idea is to get as far out of your comfort zone as you can.

• Isn't great for beginners:  If you're coming from a more sedentary lifestyle, HIIT is probably not where you want to start. You should build a strong foundation of basic cardio before trying HIIT.
• Increased risk of injury: High-intensity exercises like sprints, plyometrics or jumps come with a risk of injury if your body isn't prepared for that kind of movement.
• Can lead to burnout or overtraining: Too much HIIT is almost as bad for you as doing nothing at all. Experts recommend 1-2 HIIT workouts a week to avoid overtraining.

A Sample HIIT Workout

HIIT workouts can be set up in a variety of ways. For example, Tabata Workouts involve working very hard for 20 seconds with only 10 seconds of recovery time. You repeat that again and again for a total of 4 minutes, as in this cardio Tabata workout.

You can also do workouts with a longer work interval, such as high-intensity work for 40 seconds and recovery for 20 seconds, as in this 40-20 high-intensity interval workout.

The shorter the recovery times, the harder the workout is since you're never fully ready for the next work set.

The following workout involves a variety of high intensity, high impact cardio exercises and a 1:1 work to rest ratio.

That means your work sets and rest sets are the same duration. The idea is to keep going, even as you get fatigued towards the end of the workout, although if you feel dizzy or feel that you can't catch your breath, you should take longer breaks.

Steady State Cardio

Steady state or moderate intensity cardio is what many of us are used to. This involves exercising at a consistent speed and level of intensity for the entire workout. That would be at about level 4 to 5 on the perceived exertion scale.

The idea is to work at a level where you can talk with maybe just a little difficulty.

Pros and Cons of Steady State Training

Steady state training also has some benefits such as:

• Less stress on the cardiorespiratory system: Because you're working at a lower intensity, you can improve your endurance without putting as much stress on the heart and body as higher intensity exercise.
• Increased endurance:  Longer slower exercise helps you build endurance, both in your heart and your muscles.
• Improved health:  Like HIIT, cardio makes your heart more efficient, getting oxygen to the muscles more quickly. Steady state cardio also lowers blood pressure, reduces stress and anxiety and, along with a healthy diet, can help you lose weight.
• Faster recovery:  Because you're putting less stress on your heart and body, you recover more quickly and can usually workout the next day without a problem.
• It improves your body's ability to use fat:  When you work at a lower intensity, fat is your main fuel source. Staying at that level allows you to save those glycogen stores for higher intensity workouts. That doesn't necessarily mean you burn more fat, just that your body is better at using fat for fuel.
• It increases slow-twitch muscle fibers:  Slow twitch muscle fibers are more efficient at using oxygen to generate energy, so you can go for a longer period of time. This improves your aerobic metabolism which is, essentially, how your body creates energy.
• More enjoyable:  Part of the reason we stick with exercise is that, on some level, we like it. Or at least we can tolerate it. It's much more comfortable to work at a lower level of intensity than it is higher intensity. Some exercisers may even quit after too much intense exercise just because it's so uncomfortable.

Some of the disadvantages of steady state training include:

• The time factor:  If you're trying to lose weight, you have to workout for longer periods of time if you want to burn enough calories.
• Risk of overuse injuries:  Doing the same motions over and over can lead to repetitive stress injuries unless you do plenty of cross-training.
• Boredom: Not everyone is cut out for long, slow workouts, especially if the weather is bad and you have to get on a treadmill, stationary bike or other cardio machines. That kind of workout can feel boring and tedious if you do it all the time.
• Weight loss plateaus: Doing only steady state cardio workouts without changing things up could lead to a plateau. You need to challenge your body with new and different activities so it can constantly change and grow stronger.

Should You Do HIIT, Steady State, or Both?

With all that in mind, which one is right for you? The answer really depends on your fitness level and goals more than anything else. And keep in mind that experts don't recommend doing HIIT more than twice to three times a week.

Who Should Try HIIT?

• You're an experienced exerciser comfortable with high-intensity exercise.
• You want to focus on losing weight and burning more calories both during and after your workouts.
• You want shorter workouts because of a busy lifestyle.
• You want workouts that mix up different exercises and intensities to keep things interesting.
• You want to build endurance quickly.

Who Should Stick With Steady State?

• Beginners or anyone coming back from a long exercise break.
• Anyone who can't do high-impact exercise or doesn't like working at very high intensities.
• Someone training for an endurance race, such as a half-marathon or marathon, although you may do some high-intensity work depending on the training plan you're following.
• Anyone who's been told to avoid high-intensity exercise by a doctor.

Best of Both Worlds

In a perfect world, you would have some mixture of both steady state and HIIT. For beginners, you can actually build up your endurance and stamina for HIIT training by starting with aerobic interval training.

That involves changing up your intensity just enough to push you out of your comfort zone, but not so far out that you're miserable or breathless. This beginner interval workout is a great place to start.

As you practice, you can start to increase the intensity of your intervals from week to week.

The other key to working up to HIIT is consistency. Doing cardio on a regular basis is how you build the foundation that will allow you to work harder and get more out of your workouts.

Sample HIIT/Stead State Cardio Schedule

Day 1:  30-minute sprint interval workout
Day 2:  40-minute cardio endurance workout
Day 3:  Rest or light activity
Day 4:  25-minute Tabata cardio challenge
Day 5:  30 or more minutes of moderate cardio, like walking, jogging, cycling, etc.
Day 6:  Rest or light activity
Day 7:  30-minute aerobic cardio or rest

Milk is made of two proteins, casein and whey. Whey protein can be separated from the casein in milk or formed as a by-product of cheese making. Whey protein is considered a complete protein as it contains all 9 essential amino acids. It is low in lactose content.

There are many benefits associated with the consumption of whey protein, and researchers are constantly finding new possible therapeutic properties. Here, we explain what the benefits might be, and look at some of the side effects and potential risks.

Fast facts on whey protein:

• Many of the potential benefits are based on single studies and more evidence is required before making definitive judgment.
• Whey protein is a mixture of beta-lactoglobulin, alpha lactalbumin, bovine serum albumin, and immunoglobins.
• Possible benefits include weight loss and lowering cholesterol.
• Possible dangers include nausea and headaches , but at moderate doses, whey protein is not considered dangerous.

Benefits

Aiding weight loss: In one study of 158 people, published in Nutrition & Metabolism , those who were given whey "lost significantly more body fat and showed a greater preservation of lean muscle compared to subjects consuming the control beverage."

Anti-cancer properties: Promising results were published in the journal Anticancer Research  for the use of whey protein concentrate in cancer treatment. More research is needed.

Lowering cholesterol: A study, published in The British Journal of Nutrition , gave whey supplements to 70 overweight men and women for 12 weeks and measured a number of parameters, such as lipid and insulin  levels. They found that "there was a significant decrease in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol at week 12 in the whey group compared with the casein (group)."

Asthma: Whey protein could improve the immune response in children with asthma. One small study involving 11 children, published in the International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition , found that children with asthma who were supplemented with 10 gram whey protein twice daily for 1 month had an improved immune response.

Blood pressure and cardiovascular disease: Research published in the International Dairy Journal found that beverages that were supplemented with whey protein significantly reduced blood pressure  in patients with hypertension; their risk of developing heart disease  or stroke  was also lower.

Reducing weight loss in people with HIV: A study published in the journal Clinical and Investigative Medicine  found that whey protein may help reduce weight loss among HIV-positive patients.

Possible dangers

Some people who are allergic to milk may be specifically allergic to whey. In moderate doses, whey protein does not typically cause any adverse events. However, consuming very high doses can cause:

• stomach pains
• cramps
• reduced appetite
• nausea
• headache
• fatigue

Consistent high doses of whey protein may also cause acne. From a nutritional point of view, whey protein is very unusual and does not have a natural equivalent.

Some people believe that there are risks from nutritionally refined foods such as these, because, although they contain a lot of nutrients, the balance is heavily tipped towards protein.

Types

There are three primary types of whey protein; whey protein concentrate (WPC), whey protein isolate (WPI), and whey protein hydrolysate (WPH).

Let's look at each of these in turn:

• Whey protein concentrate  - WPC contains low levels of fat and low levels of carbohydrates. The percentage of protein in WPC depends on how concentrated it is. Lower end concentrates tend to have 30 percent protein and higher end up to 90 percent.
• Whey protein isolate  - WPIs are further processed to remove all the fat and lactose. WPI is usually at least 90 percent protein.
• Whey protein hydrolysate  - WPH is considered to be the "predigested" form of whey protein as it has already undergone partial hydrolysis - a process necessary for the body to absorb protein. WPH doesn't require as much digestion as the other two forms of whey protein.

Also, WPH is commonly used in medical protein supplements and infant formulas because of it's improved digestibility and reduced allergen potential.

Muscle building and weight loss

Whey protein supplementation along with resistance exercise can help improve muscle protein synthesis and promote the growth of lean tissue mass.

A study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism   concluded that "whey protein supplementation during resistance training offers some benefit compared to resistance training alone." In addition, "males who supplemented with whey protein had a greater relative gain in lean tissue mass."

Much better gains in strength are associated with whey isolate supplementation compared with casein.

This was demonstrated in another study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism , which concluded that in "two groups of matched, resistance-trained males whey isolate provided significantly greater gains in strength, lean body mass, and a decrease in fat mass compared with supplementation with casein during an intense 10-week resistance-training program."

If you want to buy whey isolate supplementation, then there is an excellent selection online  with thousands of customer reviews.

Mechanism

Even the anticipation of exercise can spark a rush of adrenaline. Upon exercise or before, your brain sends a signal to your adrenal glands. In response, your adrenal glands excrete epinephrine into the bloodstream. The release of epinephrine is greater in an untrained person than a trained person.

Effect

Epinephrine is released as part of the sympathetic nervous system initiating the "fight or flight response.'' It increase your heart rate in order to increase the amount of blood your heart beats each minute. More blood flowing means a larger amount of oxygen available to your muscles that need it. It also works to constrict your blood vessels, increasing your blood pressure and to allow more blood to your muscles.

Mood

Regular exercise training can increase your mood. With regular exercise comes a reduction in the levels of epinephrine at rest. Less sympathetic nervous system innervation leads to a reduction in the intense feelings that come from epinephrine. In addition, depletion of epinephrine on a daily basis that can come from being over-stimulated can lead to fatigue. Less fatigue can mean a happier mood.

Metabolism

Your adrenaline rush from epinephrine also influences your metabolism. Epinephrine stimulates the metabolism of carbohydrate and fat stores inside your body. In preparation for the "fight or flight response" your body must have ample fuel to run on. For this reason, epinephrine increases the activity of the hormones responsible for breaking down glycogen and fat and making it available for your muscles.

Can Certain Foods Produce High Epinephrine Levels?

You may know it better as adrenaline, but epinephrine is a hormone produced in your brain in response to strong emotions such as fear or anger. A release of the hormone causes an increase in your heart rate, blood pressure, muscle strength and blood sugar and serves as a means to get you ready for strenuous activity, or flight or fight. While stress response usually triggers epinephrine, certain foods may affect levels.

Food and Epinephrine Levels

Coffee, tea, citrus fruits, bananas, chocolate, cocoa and vanilla can raise epinephrine levels. MedlinePlus says you should avoid these foods for several days before a catecholamine blood or urine test, which measures epinephrine levels as well as dopamine and norepinephrine, and helps diagnose certain kinds of tumors called neuroblastoma or pheochromocytoma.

Bulking is a controversial topic.

Some say it’s the only way to gain muscle effectively, and others say it’s a relic of the Dark Ages of bodybuilding.

“You gotta eat big to get big,” the former say.

“No,” the latter reply, “you just have to eat right.”

That is, traditional bulking maintains that, to achieve maximum muscle growth, you should do whatever it takes to cram down thousands of calories per day (GOMAD, for example), and accept rapid fat gain as a price to be paid.

Followers of the new philosophy, however, say that you don’t have to eat a large surplus of food and gain a large amount of body fat to build muscle effectively.

If you train right, and ensure you’re recovering adequately, they claim, you don’t need to cudgel your body with calories to grow.

Who’s right? Well, both are.

Old-school bulkers are correct in that you need to eat more food than usual to build muscle efficiently, and new-schoolers are correct in that ballooning your body fat percentage is not only unnecessary for muscle building, but detrimental.

There’s a sweet spot is in the middle, which is where clean bulking enters the picture.

It marries what bodybuilders have known anecdotally for decades with what modern scientific research into muscle hypertrophy has revealed, giving you the best of both worlds.

In other words, clean bulking allows you to gain muscle as quickly as possible, without forcing you to get fat in the process.

And in this article, we’re going to break it all down.

You’re going to learn where “dirty bulking” misses the mark, why clean bulking works better, and how to actually go about doing it.

Let’s get started.

The 3 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make While Bulking

1. The first mistake is simply eating too many calories.
   
2. The second mistake is eating too much junk food.
   
3. The third mistake is “cheating” too often.
   

• Why you need to regulate your caloric intake while bulking.
  
• Why you should get most of your calories from nutritious foods.
  

• Calculate your calories.
  
• Calculate your macros.
  
• Make a meal plan.
  
• Cheat intelligently.
  
• Adjust your food intake based on how your body responds.
  
• Be patient.
  

• Creatine
  
• Protein Powder
  
• Pre-Workout Drink
  

When most people decide they want to take control of their physique and lose some fat, the next step seems clear: Go on a diet. But honestly, not everyone should take that step.

For those with a history of crash dieting, severe calorie restriction, or multiple failed diet attempts, jumping once more on the diet bandwagon is unlikely to yield results, and will probably do more harm than good.

Over repeated bouts of calorie restriction, your metabolism takes a beating. When you drop calories too low for too long, your body intervenes on several fronts. Most notably, it reduces the number of calories you burn throughout the day, often priming your body for surprisingly rapid weight gain.

This biological phenomenon, known as "metabolic adaptation," can really throw a wrench in your weight-loss goals. With your body continuously fighting to erase the calorie deficit necessary for fat loss, eating fewer calories than you burn can eventually become very tricky. You can only drop calories so far and increase exercise so much before that lifestyle becomes miserable, as well as impossible to maintain.

Fortunately, for anyone fighting an uphill battle against a slow metabolism, there may be a solution. It's possible to reboot metabolism and ultimately lower what's known as your "body-fat set point"—or the level of body fat your body finds easiest to maintain— through a process known as "reverse dieting."

Here's everything you need to know to get started with what may turn out to be the best diet of your life!

What Is Exactly Reverse Dieting?

Reverse dieting is pretty much what it sounds like: a diet turned upside-down. Instead of cutting calories and ramping up time spent on the treadmill, you increase metabolism by gradually adding calories back into your diet while reducing cardio.

Although it sounds very simple, there's more to reverse dieting than just "eat more, do less." If you want to maximize gains in metabolic rate without storing a ton of body fat, you must be strategic and patient. This means giving your metabolism time to adjust by making slow, deliberate changes, rather than hitting the buffet every day and cutting out cardio overnight.

To grasp the science behind the theory of reverse dieting, you need to understand what happens in your body during metabolic adaptation.

Metabolic Adaptations From Dieting

When you drastically restrict calories or lose weight, your body senses the energy gap and your departure from its body-fat set point. In a desperate attempt to erase the energy gap and put the brakes on fat loss, several body systems work together to orchestrate a reduction in metabolism[1,2]:

• Your organs consume less energy.
• Your heart beats slower as sympathetic nervous system activity declines.
• Hormones that influence metabolism and appetite, such as thyroid hormone, testosterone, leptin, and ghrelin, are adversely effected.
• You burn less energy during nonexercise activities, such as fidgeting, walking around the house, working, and doing chores.
• You use fewer calories to absorb and digest food because you're eating less.
• Your muscle becomes more efficient, requiring less fuel for a given amount of work.

These changes ultimately boil down to burning fewer calories, both at rest and while working out. This sounds bleak, but luckily, metabolic adaptation is not a one-way street.

You can slow down your metabolism, but you can also speed it up! This is what the concept of reverse dieting is built upon. Many of the physiological changes that work to slow metabolism during calorie restriction can occur in the opposite direction when overeating to make metabolism faster.[1]

But you can't just go on a pizza binge and expect metabolism to increase overnight. It takes time! This was demonstrated when researchers at Laval University in Quebec overfed 24 men by 1000 calories for 84 days.[3] At first, almost all of the extra calories turned into fat or contributed to lean mass. By the end of the study, however, as each subject's metabolism adapted, more and more calories were burned, rather than being used to create new tissue.

The moral of the story is that metabolism will speed up eventually to dispose of some of the extra calories you eat. But if you drastically increase calories before your metabolism has time to catch up, you'll pile on the pounds.

How To Reverse Diet

Through reverse dieting and heavy lifting, Katie Anne harnessed the power of metabolic adaption to turn her body into a calorie-burning machine. You may be able to do this too by following these six steps:

1. Calculate Your Current Calories And Establish Starting Macro Targets

To avoid jumping up in calories too quickly, you need to know how many calories you're currently eating to maintain your body weight. From there, you'll use this to establish baseline macros.

First, track everything you eat for a few days to determine your average caloric intake. Let's say it's 1,800 calories.

Second, set your protein target at 1 gram per pound of body weight. If you weigh, say, 150 pounds, your protein intake will be 150 grams of protein.

Third, subtract your protein calories from your current total-calorie goal to determine the remaining calories:

• 150 grams of protein x 4 calories per gram = 600 calories of protein.
• 1800 total calories - 600 calories from protein = 1200 remaining calories.

Take your remaining calories, and split them 40/60 or 60/40 between carbs and fat. These numbers can be manipulated, but either one of the above is a good starting place.

Let's say in this example that you love carbs, so you decide to set carbs at 60 percent and fat at 40 percent of the remaining calories.

• 1200 x 0.6 = 720 calories from carbs
• 1200 x 0.4 = 480 calories from fat

To determine your macros, divide the carb calories by 4 and fat calories by 9.

• 720 calories of carbs / 4 calories per gram = 180 grams of carbs
• 480 calories of fat / 9 calories per gram = 53 grams of fat

You now have your baseline macros. In this example, they are 150 grams of protein, 180 grams of carbs, and 53 grams of fat.

2. Decide How Quickly You Want To Increase Carbs And Fat

To figure this out, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• Do I care more about reaching a higher caloric intake than I do about gaining excess fat?
• Am I trying to overcome a history of binge-eating behavior?
• Am I planning to hit the weight room hard and add muscle while I reverse?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," you may benefit from a more aggressive reverse. Although you'll likely gain more body fat by increasing carbs and fat quickly, you'll feel better and less deprived, you'll have more flexibility to fit in the foods you crave, and you'll be less inclined to binge. The extra calories that accompany an aggressive reverse may also give you more energy to train, allowing you to build muscle.

If you're concerned about gaining body fat, you may benefit from a more conservative reverse. For example, if you're coming off a reasonable diet where you reached your goal body weight, you may want to increase fat and carbs more slowly to better maintain your results.

3. Raise Carbs And Fat At A Rate Compatible With Your Goals

If you've decided that a slow reverse is more in line with your goals, start by increasing your carb and fat intake by just 2-5 percent per week, depending on how concerned you are with gaining weight.

If you've decided that a fast reverse is for you, you should start by increasing your carb and fat intake by 6-10 percent per week. You may even want to increase fat and carbs by 15-25 percent the first week to give yourself a jump-start.

4. Weigh Yourself Multiple Times Per Week To Control Weight Gain

Choose 2-3 days per week, and weigh yourself first thing in the morning. Assessing your average weight change over the course of the week will help you evaluate your macro manipulations and decide on your next increase (if necessary).

If you see a large jump in weight gain over a one-week period, you may want to scale back the rate at which you're increasing your intake. On the other hand, if you maintain your current weight, or even lose slightly, bump up both carbohydrates and fat.

5. Slowly Reduce The Time You Spend Doing Cardio, And Add Heavy Lifting To Your Workout Routine

Lifting heavy 3-6 days a week is a great way to build muscle, which increases metabolism not only in the short term, but also over the long run. Long sessions of steady-state cardio do little to build muscle, and they may even interfere with muscle-building pathways.[4]

6. When You Reach Your Desired Caloric Intake, Stop And Choose Your Next Action

Once you're satisfied with the amount of food you're eating, stop adding calories and go from there. If you feel good, you may want to stay at this level. If you'd like to lose weight now that your metabolism is at a better starting point, go right ahead!

But be smart about how you go about it; don't recklessly slash calories. You'll want to diet on as many calories as possible while still losing weight. Your metabolism depends upon it.

In the long run, processed foods can affect your health. Below are reasons why it is important to use fresh ingredients when cooking, and what a fresh meal can offer you.

HEALTH

When cooking with fresh ingredients, your food can retain a lot more nutrients compared to processed foods. In many cases, processed foods have been in contact with pesticides, or other artificial substances. To improve your health, always try your best to avoid processed food, and use fresh ingredients when possible.

BETTER FLAVOR

When eating you want to get the most flavor possible from your food, which is why it is important to use fresh ingredients. Preserved food loses taste as time goes on, but fresh ingredients with no preservatives provide a more true flavor. For the best result in flavor and nutrition, eat your fruits and vegetables within 48 hours of purchasing them.

SAVING MONEY

Fresh ingredients aren’t always cheaper than processed ones, but in the long run your health will be better. Eating a lot of low quality food can eventually harm your health, and you will end up paying much more in medicines and treatment. In the summer, you could even think about planting your own fruits and vegetables, which could help you save money.

Here are 4 things a fresh meal generally offers you:

• Fruits and vegetables supply you with many of the vitamins and minerals that are vital to our health.
• Hydration is important when it comes to our health. Fresh fruits and vegetables have a higher water content than other foods, which actually offers natural hydration.
• Not all oils and fats are bad, so when preparing meals yourself, you can control what kinds of oils and fat are added in.
• Enzymes help break down the food you eat into absorbable parts that our bodies can use. They help with digestion and nutrient absorption. Freezing food can lower enzyme activity.

Next time you are planning your meals or shopping in the grocery store, keep in mind the importance of using fresh ingredients for better tasting food and health or simply just order from US!