Good Morning Athletes and Warriors!Before we get to today's guest article, I wanted to pass along this little, but important side note: If you are training, eating, sleeping and living the best you can, your body is already ready to burn off high fat meals as the article suggests.
No meal plan is perfect with any Athlete and Warrior, but sound living all around will put your body in a state of readiness at all times, so the occasional Indulging will not derail your hard work and present success. Now read on!
-Nate
How to Burn Off High-Fat Meals
(From Prevention Magazine)
Time it Right: Exercise Before You Indulge
Take a long, brisk walk before your friend's wedding, and you may be able to splurge on hors d'oeuvres and cake -- guilt-free. In addition to its benefits to your waistline, exercise can help override some of the nasty effects of fat in your blood.
High-fat meals cause spikes in the amount of fat (triglycerides) in the bloodstream, which wreak havoc on cholesterol by decreasing good HDL and increasing bad LDL. Over time, these contribute to atherosclerosis and heart disease.But researchers recently found that the timing of exercise can affect these fat levels significantly. When a group of 21 men exercised 12 hours before a high-fat meal, they cut the amount of fat in the blood by half. (Exercising 1 hour before the meal lowered the fat by nearly 40%.) Working out after a high-fat meal, on the other hand, reduced it by only 5%.
"Exercise stimulates fat-clearing enzymes," says study coauthor Tom R. Thomas, PhD, director of the exercise physiology lab at the University of Missouri- Columbia. Fats are either broken down and excreted, or taken up by muscle and fat tissue. Either way, they're out of the bloodstream and less able to increase LDL cholesterol and heart disease risks.
"I don't think the 12-hour time frame is critical," notes Dr. Thomas. "A better approach is to exercise consistently. Most of us eat a high-fat meal every day, making it important to exercise every day."
You'll also have less of the visible kind of fat. Other studies have shown that exercise speeds the breakdown of fat-and if you're exercising at a moderate intensity or higher, your body will also burn fat long after you stop exercising. Dr. Thomas also suspects that if you're fit, more of the fat will be stored in muscle to be used for your next workout, while it will more likely be stored as visible fat if you're unfit.
Quick Tip: Lose Twice as Many Pounds: Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that women who exercised for at least 150 minutes a week (that's 30 minutes five times a week) lost nearly twice as many pounds- 25 versus 14-as women who exercised less.
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