Can’t stick with your exercise program?

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining our chat about setting fitness goals and keeping them.

Can’t stick with your exercise program? Today you will find out ways to stay in the game, and what you may be doing to sabotage your exercise program.

Dr. Sheila Collins, a researcher in the field of fat metabolism at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona, and a former fitness trainer, will give you mental tricks to achieve physical goals, and answer your questions about the role of exercise in dieting.

Dr. Collins will also share her expertise about fat metabolism. Until the mid-1990s, adipose (fat) tissue had been largely considered an inert storage depot for excess metabolic fuel, much like a savings bank. There is now a better understanding of how fat cells secrete key hormones that play help regulate body weight and insulin sensitivity.

Dr. Collins received her doctorate in biochemistry and drug metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and conducted postdoctoral research at Duke University. Dr. Collins continued her research career at Duke University Medical Center and The Hamner Institute in North Carolina prior to joining Sanford-Burnham.

Thank you for joining us, Dr. Collins

MY pleasure to be with you today

What are some common ways people set themselves up for failure when they start an exercise program?

When I was an instructor in a gym I would see new people at the beginning of the year who were making a ‘New Year’s resolution’ to get in shape. Let me tell you a few things that I saw as danger signs to not being able to accomplish their desire to get healthier.

New participants would come up to me and say ‘hi I am a new member and I really want to get in shape like you. So I’m going to come to the gym 5 days a week. Ouch! I would usually say “wait right there – I want to see you here twice a week, and if you come another day or two that is ‘gravy’. First let’s just start to get the routine going.

The reason for this advice is that if someone is going to try to change their daily routine and life pattern so dramatically – well, it usually fails. And then THEY feel like a failure if they do not meet that unrealistic goal, and then they quit – period.

People also have to make realistic goals. It is going to take time to change a dress size, but there are so many additional benefits to exercise- like burning off some stress or ‘steam’, changing one’s focus for awhile – away from work, away from home chores – and doing something just for you.

When someone starts an exercise program, also pick something that you think you might like – if you like to dance pick an aerobic class or a zumba class, for example.

Another element to remember – don’t compare yourself to other people in the gym or in a class – for the most part they are not looking at you!! They are too busy trying to follow the class or paying attention to their own workout. And if someone is going to be judgmental – well, you wouldn’t want to have that kind of person for a friend, right? So why care about what THEY think?

Here’s what I think: change is going to happen gradually so don’t expect to drop 2 sizes in two months. And people are different in terms of their ability to gain or lose weight. And speaking of weight, I would not let the scale be the way you judge your progress. Want to know why?

Muscle is much denser than fat. So for a given ‘volume’ of fat vs muscle, the muscle is going to weigh more. I had participants in the gym come to me freaked out saying “I’ve been working out for months and I haven’t lost any weight!”

So then I ask them, well forget the scale, how do your clothes feel on your body? If they are becoming a little looser in the waist, hips, then you must be ‘re-contouring’ your body, gaining muscle mass and tone (and fat-burning capability) and reducing percent body fat.

What is more important for weight loss, dieting or exercise?

Dr. Collins, any thoughts on why when I try to lose weight why it mostly happens in my upper body? On the other hand, when I gain it’s in my stomach, hips + thighs?

How does exercise affect metabolism? Is there a better way to give mine a boost?

Well, I would say that dieting alone is not going to be the right choice. If all you could do was ONE thing – and I am not a dietician, not a professional trainer as a career, not a clinical doctor – I am a scientist – exercise is better. Why? Because you are going to expend energy as the body does ‘work’. You will also gain muscle mass – as long as you are doing some form of strength training exercise; and this will increase your basal capacity for burning calories. However, you cannot eat more to compensate for this increased physical acitivty!! No saying “oh I can eat all that now because I am exercising.”

Regarding dieting alone – why not good?

Dieting alone.

The body is WIRED to store energy. We evolved in the cave days – little to eat; berries, fruit maybe, an occasional succesful hunt for meat or fish. So when food was available, you had better well store it because it’s infrequent. Not able to gain weight or retain it…your genes are gone from the gene-pool. All the biochemistry of appetite and body fat metabolism and muscle tell us that this is true. So dieting alone – yes back to that…

Your body is going to try to conserve energy when dieting. Everything is going to slow down. You reach a plateau and you actually lose muscle mass – -NOT what you want! And the minute to stop dieting – BING! – up goes the weight again…sometimes even more than when you started.

How discouraging. Sooo …. what do we do to counter that tendency?

Hi Marni – it is good to change up your workouts. When we only do one activity our bodies become very efficient at it. If you do different activities that use different muscle groups or different forms of endurance – steady cardio vs interval/sprint type of thing, you challenge different areas. It is almost good to be slightly ‘de-tuned’ we might say, because your body has not optimized the efficiency of that muscle work. Does that make sense?

…so for that given exercise you are going to burn more calories. Changing up what you do can also keep you from becoming stale or burned out.

Are you asking about dieting alone and the tendency to reduce energy expenditure?

I’m interested in how to reverse the tendency to gain back more weight after we’ve lost weight and hit a plateau.

Here’s a question from our audience:

What do you think about commitment contracts that hold people more accountable for achieving their goals? A friend of mine (a Yale economics professor) founded a website created with the principles of behavioral economics in mind. Since people hate losing money even more than they hate exercising, they can make a public pledge (often backed with cash) to keep up their resolutions. If they fail, the bucks head to their choice of a snide friend, favorite charity, or an “anti-charity” – i.e., a cause they despise.

I say whatever works. That won’t work for some, but for others yes it may. I say try things until they work for you.

Does working out with a friend or family member help people stick to a program or hinder progress?

Yes – working out with someone else is a great idea – because now you not only have some company so you feel you at least know ‘someone’ in the gym!! but it also sets a commitment – you agree to be there with someone else; they are expecting you. Remember I am not a psychologist, this is just my own experience in the years I have been in the gym as a member and as an instructor.

What mind games have you seen prove to be successful at helping people stick with an exercise program?

Wow – all kinds of things.

You can ‘bargain’ with yourself. Like the example I gave earlier of the person who said they were new to the gym and going to come 5 days/week. Bargain and say – I’m going to feel really good about myself if I get to the gym this week. Then it’s two days a week…

Or how about when you are doing sit-ups or some routine exercise task and you want to get more out of it – “oh …just 5 more” – and when you get down to 1 say “oh, well, just 5 more.” It makes it easier to ‘bite off’ small bits instead of saying now I have to do 85 sit-ups.

I can keep my weight under control by diet alone. Why do I still need to exercise?

I don’t know if this is a mind game, but often it is just getting yourself through the door of the gym, or just getting your workout clothes on your body! Once you’re ‘there’, you are more likely to take the next step and get to the activity.

You can keep your weight by dieting? A few comments here…

Some of us can keep our weight by dieting – we are the ones that would have not survived in the cave days! So you have a given weight and body size – how much of that is fat vs how much is muscle? Don’t care about that? Let me tell you why maybe you should.

Everyone focuses on weight loss, but tell me more about the role of exercise in fat metabolism. What’s the science behind the boost?

Especially as we grow older, and in our ‘modern’ life of more processed foods, as hormones in our bodies change and our organs handle blood lipids and cholesterol less well…exercise can have a great benefit for these factors: Increase your ‘good’ HDL cholesterol, lower the bad LD cholesterol and triglycerides, which help improve ‘heart health.’ Remember heart disease is the number one killer. That’s one example, here’s another:

For women – bone density. Weight-bearing exercise helps to maintain bone strength. When muscle work ‘pulls’ on the bone, it stimulates new growth of bone mass and mineral deposition.

OK – regarding fat metabolism:

In my world of studying fat cell metabolism and the role of adrenaline, we know that adrenaline kick-starts a process in fat cells to get them to breakdown and release the stored fat in there. So out into the circulation it goes. Well, it had to get used somewhere or it is just gloating around bathing other organs in the fatty acids,,and then if not used gets stored. So the place where we can get these fatty acids burned is in muscle. Although there’s more exciting stuff about this as well…let me briefly explain

We are discovering that hormones that are made in the heart – called ‘natriuretic peptides’, whose best understood role is to lower blood pressure, also have direct effects on fat cells to do almost the same process as adrenaline. We also know that the amounts of these hormones and the “receptors” on the fat cell surface that sense these hormones can be increased or decreased and thus affect the burning of fat. There’s also another kind of fat called brown fat.

So what can we do to make more ot these hormones and boost the fat burning affect? Increase our adrenaline somehow? How?

Just to finish that last thought about heart hormones – we are just now figuring out how these peptides and receptors are regulated – so more research is going on now on that!)

But brown fat – this is a kind of fat cell that stores some fat but also consumes “burns” fat! We know that hormones like catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) as well as the heart hormones can boost their numbers and activity. It is a ‘hot’ area of research you might say right now!

One last point I would like to make – everyone is different. Everyone’s genetic makeup is different – like a hand of cards. So you have to understand what works for you; for some people maintaining a healthy body weight and percent body fat is easier than for others. You need to ‘love’ yourself and work with yourself and don’t beat yourself up. Haven’t been able to get the exercise you planned this week – get back on that horse and ride!!

So interesting. I’m motivated! So knowing what you know, what’s your best advice to someone who only has time for one hour of exercise every other day, should I do aerobic exercise or weight training? Any other tips for making best use of my brown fat?

IF they have one hour a day? How about one day weights, the next cardio – change it up so you can get the benefits of both.

I’m on it. Thanks!

If you missed any part of this event, a transcript will be available later today.

Join us for our next live event on Wednesday, April 27, at noon with Matt Goulding, co-author of the ‘Eat This, Not That!’ series of books. Goulding will answer questions about eating healthy at restaurants, and how to prepare healthier, restaurant-style dinners at home.

Thank you for joining our chat and to Dr. Collins for sharing her expertise.

Thanks ! Now back to the lab with me!