Upon moving to San Diego just over a year ago I was surprised at how many people were into work early so that they could be out enjoying Mother Nature in the afternoon. Being an exercise enthusiast from the North East I’ve had a blast either running 8+ miles around La Jolla cove, hopping on my bike for 40+ miles, or even the dreaded JCC Master’s swims led by full time masochists Chad, Nikee, and Rachel. The combination of any of these workouts and the preceding workday resulted in both physical and mental exhaustion, not to mention quite an appetite, which may explain why some people don’t lose as muc weight as they expect on an exercise program. And, if anyone out there has attended one of the San Diego Triathlon Club Aquathons you can attest to the caloric explosion that can occur after 30 – 50 minutes of lung burning activity followed by one of the finest post-race food spreads in the history of after-race parties.

However, a recent article in the New York Times about the timing of meals made me re-think my typical post-workout feed bag routine.

The New York Time article “Late Night Eating Linked to Weight Gain” comments on a medical study performed at Northwestern University and will be published in the peer reviewed journal Obesity next month. Researchers at the university found that mice whose feeding was restricted to daylight hours (the equivalent of our night time for our squeeky, furry, nocturnal friends) gained 28% more weight than the group that ate during their regular feeding times during the night as they instinctively do.

At first thought, you would think that the obvious reason for the weight gain in the first group of mice was because they ate more calories. Guess what? You’d be wrong! The researchers found that both groups consumed nearly equal number of calories and exercised for similar duration on each day, making the only difference between the groups the meal timing.

Now, granted this is an animal study and the results should not be immediately directed towards humans but it does give some guidance to those athletes looking to shed a few pounds.

I’m not suggesting that we all eliminate eating after our evening workouts, since re-fueling is an important part of proper recovery after a hard workout. Getting the correct amounts of protein and carbohydrates within 30 to 60 minutes after a workout (known as the glycogen window) is proven to increase muscle glycogen storage and provides a larger energy source for your next workout. However, for most of us the total calories that needs to be consumed for this effect is only around 500 calories – that maybe 2 bagels, or a turkey sandwich with a side of veggies.

I’m sure that on a semi-regular basis I approach the 1500 calorie range with my post-work meal, especially after a long workout. I have to admit, that previously I had been under the impression that in order to reduce weight, calories in had to be less than calories out. However, this new research may suggest that simply changing the time of day when these calories are consumed could help to reduce excess weight. I am even more convinced of these findings after thinking of previous research that has shown lower body weights for those individuals who ate breakfast every morning when compared to those that routinely skipped breakfast. I am sure that I’m not the only one who has over-eaten after an evening workout to the degree where breakfast isn’t even appetizing.

So once again, I’m not saying that we should stop eating when the sun goes down (we’re athletes, we need to eat). I’m saying that for the majority of us who aren’t training 30 hrs a week like the pros with a body fat percentage hovering around 6% it might be a good idea to re-distribute some of the calories. Instead of gorging yourself at the all you can eat buffet after beating yourself up with 10 x 400m with a 1 mile warm up and cool down on the track, save some of those calories for breakfast the next morning.

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Evan Johnson is a San Diego personal trainer with a Master’s Degree in Exercise Science. If you’d like a fitness consultation with Evan, give us a call at 858-678-0300

If you missed part 1 of this San Diego sports doctor’s response to the Time Magazine article “Why exercise won’t make you thin”, you can find it on our sports medicine blog.

“Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.”

While Mr Cloud is technically correct about the 40 calorie difference between 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pound of fat at rest, he doesn’t take into consideration two important calculations – the initial energy expenditure someone would need (that means exercise) to lose 10 pounds of fat while building 10 pounds of muscle and the daily difference that the extra ten pounds of muscle adds when the muscle is active during exercise. The study Mr Cloud quotes talks about the energy expenditure difference when at rest (sleeping, sitting, etc) but there may be a noticable increase in energy expenditure once you start using that added 10 pounds of muscle during daily movement or exercise depending on your view of the research. A study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology from the University of Alabama in 2000 looked at the effects of 26 week resistance training on older adults found that even after correcting for the energy expenditure during the resistance workout, there was still an increase in the total daily energy expenditure of about 178 extra calories per day.

Mr Cloud continues…”All this helps explain why our herculean exercise over the past 30 years — all the personal trainers, StairMasters and VersaClimbers; all the Pilates classes and yoga retreats and fat camps — hasn’t made us thinner. After we exercise, we often crave sugary calories like those in muffins or in “sports” drinks like Gatorade. A standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories. If you’re hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it’s easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash. From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.”

One rough rule of thumb is based on a 2004 study on the energy expenditure of walking and running published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise which found the total number of calories burned from walking 1 mile was equal to 0.53 x the person’s body weight (in pounds) and the total number of calories used during running was approximately 0.75 x the person’s body weight (in pounds). So for the above example of a 20 minute run, if we assume a slow jog at 10 minute per mile pace (or 2 miles in 20 minutes), a 155 pound person would still burn (0.75 x 155)

There are several readily available activity-calorie guides at http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm and http://www.healthdiscovery.net/links/calculators/calorie_calculator.htm that calculate calories burned for various exercises and exercise intensities. Looking at values from the above on-line calorie guides, running 20 minutes at a fast jog (2 miles at a 10 minute per mile pace) would require about (704 calories/ hr * 0.333 of an hour) 234.6 calories of energy expenditure in a 155 lbs person. In a 190 lbs person, that 2 mile jog would burn about 287 calories – even if we took a light weight 130 pound Kenyan marathoner on a really, really slow day for him, we’d still be looking at a caloric burn of roughly 196 calories, still more that the 130 calorie Gatorade that the author blames for adding the extra poundage to Americans.

Yes, obviously chugging the 130 calorie Gatorade wouldn’t result in as much of a calorie-deficient from the 20 mintues of exercise that just drinking plain water, but that short time duration of exercise is also why sports medicine societies like the American College of Sports Medicine don’t start recommending a carbohydrate and electrolyte sports drink unless the exercise is an hour or more.

How about the psychology of self-control? – Or the comment that self control is like a muscle that gets weaker each time you use it? There is actually a lot of interesting published research on the science of “self-control” behavior as it relates to a lot of different areas; diet, addiction, criminal activity, etc. The study that the Time Magazine article referred to appeared to find that in the group of test subjects that demonstrated diminishing “self-control” with exercise or food selections may also have had a less intense sense or feeling of motivation towards reaching weight loss goals in comparison to the group of test subjects that did not exhibit a diminishing level of “self-control.” This finding may have more to do with the role of fitness and health professionals role in identifying and improving the level of motivation among weight loss and fitness clients. Some people approach exercise, fitness and weight loss with a negative attitude (like one patient of mine that commonly pointed out that “diet” was a painful four letter word, just “die” with a “t” added at the end. So the role of motivation towards any goal is paramount to success. Want to become an Olympic gold medalist? Want to be successful in the work place? Want to reach your goal of running a 5k, 10k, marathon or Ironman triathlon? Motivation is a key personality ingredient that can determines a person’s success with the goals they set for themselves and challenges that they face.

Memory recall of a recent meal may actually play a larger role in appetite suppression than previously thought. A series of studies published in 2008 by University of Birmingham’s School of Psychology looked at the effect of having test subjects recall what they ate just before their next meal or snack and found that the test group that did participate in the part of the study where they recalled what they ate for lunch actually ate less food for an afternoon snack. The research seemed to indicate that the phenomenon was time-dependent, meaning that the larger inhibitory effect was seen in test subjects that recalled their most recent meal rather than a meal from the previous day.

Is this the Homer Simpson theory? – could my one of my favorite shows have actually gotten it all wrong along with Time magazine? All those times that Homer J. Simpson daydreams of donuts, chocolate, Duff beer, etc were actually dietary mind control tricks acting to suppress his actual appetite? Well, according to this research, the memory effect only applies to food eaten that day. So you can think about what you had for lunch today and it will decrease your appetite for that later afternoon snack, but thinking about yesterdays lunch doesn’t have the same impact on appetitie control.

This concept of “appetite mind control” may seem like some pop psychology trick, but in fact may be related to the influence of the hormone gherlin, which influences not only the control of hunger, but also possibly cognitive function and learning ability. Animal studies have shown better performance on learning specific tasks for animals that are unfed versus those that have recently been fed, supposedly due to the effect of gherlin concentrations on the hippocampus portion of the brain. Which would explain the “Fat, happy rats don’t run mazes” theory…

I’ve had several people ask me if I felt that the writer wrote the article in this manner to be intentionally controversial. Overall, I think the Time Magazine writer didn’t intentionally try to misrepresent the research. I feel that he simply didn’t understand the research that he was attempting to use to support his theory in the article. He did manage to energize quite a response from the medical and fitness fields, however, based on the number of follow up blog posts and website articles that have been posted. Hopefully people look deeper into the issue and realize the importance of exercise not only for weight loss and weight mantenance, but for overall health

Its an interesting concern as more people try to improve their diet and nutrition and increase their fish consumption for the benefits of the omega-3 fatty acids. While I think the risk is small, especially with other issues such as mercury content in larger fish, the risk of developing “Mad Cow” disease could be an evolving concern. One more reason to look closely at the type of fish that we eat – farm-raised salmon should be labeled either as “farm raised” or “color-added”. Fish caught in the wild is also usually labelled as such.

The original topic was supposed to be about the recent 50 game suspension of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez, but sports anchor Rick Willis is a big marathon fan and decided to focus more on the healthy aspects of running and training for running races from the local 5 km fun runs to the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon.

Note that Dr Martinez had to slouch down to fit in the camera shot, and if the beginning seems a little disjointed – apparently the wireless microphone box kept unclipping and falling to to ground as they were about to come back from the commerical break!

A new study out of the University of Birmingham, (England – not Alabama) may have found another reason for the performance boost. Researchers published a paper in the Journal of Physiology that looked at the effect on cycling time trial performance in trained cyclists that simply rinsed their mouth with either a sports drink containing carbohydrates or water with added artificial sweeteners for 10 seconds before spitting out the solution.

Surprising, there was a 2-3% improvement in performance in the sports drink “swish and spit” group compared to the water and artificial sweetener group. The researchers hypothesized that there may be separate receptors in the mouth that are specific to carbohydrates. The researchers also studied the brain activity response to the different solutions and discovered that the carbohydrate solutions triggered increased activity in the part of the brain associated with pleasure and reward.

Apparently this is the same area of the brain that lights up in triathletes when the cash register drawer at B&L Bikes or Nytro opens up during a purchase. Not surprisingly, its also the same area of the brain in triathletes that leads to later targeting for elimination by upset non-triathlete spouses reviewing the monthly credit card purchases…

Looking for another way to improve your cycling performance? Check out our San Diego indoor cycling classes.

It may not be just to prevent potential caffeine withdrawal in one of the java-junkies on the ride.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have published a study in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism looking at the effect of caffeine on muscle pain and soreness after exercise.

The researchers studied 25 healthy college students and measured the amount of quadriceps (thigh) muscle soreness after a 30 minute high intensity cycling session. The cyclists were given either no caffeine or a caffeine tablet equivalent to about 2-3 cups of coffee (5 mg caffeine/kg) 60 minutes before the exercise session. 

The interesting finding was that both students that never drank caffeine on a regular basis and those that were routine caffeine drinkers both noted a decrease in muscle soreness compared to when performing the cycling test without caffeine. This finding suggests that there may not be much habituation to chronic caffeine use.

How much of a reduction in pain was noted? 

A previous 2006 study in the journal of Pain looking at caffeine and its effects on muscle soreness after eccentric (muscle lengthening) exercises reported a 48% decrease in the level of pain reported on a 0 to 100 point scale when compared to a placebo. How does that stack up to the typical pain medicines like  naproxen (Aleve), aspirin and ibuprofen?

Use of naproxen resulted in a 30 per cent decrease in soreness, aspirin use reduced in a 25 per cent decrease and ibuprofen produced inconsistent results.

Written while sitting in a coffee shop…

-Doc John

PS – My favorite coffee shop in San Diego? Zumbar Coffee and Tea in Sorrento Valley.

What’s your favorite coffee shop for the pre and post-ride caffeine consumption?

Let us know by posting a comment.

While the authors note that it was not possible to draw a direct correlation between the lower-fat intake and the increase in running injuries, there are a could of potential reasons that come to mind.

If overall fat intake is decreased, then there would also probably be a decrease in the healthier poly-unsaturated fats (PUFAs) such as omega-3 fatty acids. PUFAs have been shown to have a role in decreasing inflammation, so if there was a decrease in total fats as PUFAs, there could be a resultant increase in inflammation to tendons, muscles and ligaments than may predispose the femal runners to running injuries.

Another possible reason is the impact of a lower-fat diet on overall endurance. A previous study had demonstrated that runners on a lower-fat diet also had decreased endurance and increased fatigue. The diminshed performance capabilites could lead to biomechanical-related issues that could lead to increased injuries (Just think how well you run after you ‘bonk’ during a long run…)

Other mechanisms proposed by the authors include the potential impact of decreased absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins in the female runners on a low-fat diet. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin that is not only important for managing the blood clotting cascade, but is also used by the enzyme osteocalin in the mineralization of bone. Lower levels of Vitamin K would result in lower osteocalin function and a decrease in bone mineralization, potentially resulting in an increased risk in stress fractures.

How much dietary fat should female runners have in their diet – in this study, the authors conclude that women runners with 30% of total daily calories from fat appeared to have less running injuries.

Pass the canola and fish oil…

Dealing with a running injury? Let the San Diego sports medicine doctors at Coastal Sports and Wellness help get you back on track.

If you are unfamiliar with a Grand Slam meal – it consists of two eggs, two pancakes, two sausage links and two pieces of bacon, adding up to a whopping 795 calories including 450 calories from fat!

Thats over 75% of your daily average recommended fat intake, 150% of your daily recommended cholesterol intake and almost 100% of the daily sodium consuption at just over 2200 mg- so at least 2 million Americans got their fat, cholesterol and salt intake out of the way early on Tuesday.

Add that to the typical Superbowl overindulgance and I think we all need to add a couple of extra workouts this week.

Our take? Is VitaminWater true health in a bottle? Not quite – the Financial Times article notes that at least one flavor of VitaminWater contains 32 grams of sugar – compared to the almost 40 grams in a regular Coca-Cola, that is a step in the right direction…a small step.

I’m still scratching my head on this ranking. Unless BBQ is considered a sport or a nutritious food group, I’m not sure how Kansas City beats San Diego as a fitness city. To top those cities, Honolulu ranked in the top 10 of fittest cities, leading the way with an ‘A’ ranking for nutrition, apparently paralleling the release of Diet-SPAM and and an all-organic version…

Here’s how San Diego did on the ranking: