Your Personal Trainer: Food is fuel - Ramona Sentinel

Pizza. Fried chicken. Spaghetti. Oreos. Mmmmm, they all sound so good; especially when I’m hungry.

When we think of food, we usually associate that food with our senses of taste and smell. Smells good, tastes great. In fact, when I’m trying to decide what to eat for dinner, I usually imagine how it’ll taste. Do I want something hot or cold, chewy or soft, spicy or sweet? It’s all about the senses. Or is it?

We should all think of food, not just as tasty and pleasurable, but as fuel. For those of you looking to shed a few pounds or focus on body composition transformation (lose fat, gain muscle), it is absolutely imperative that you also think of food as fuel. Why? Well, first of all, food is fuel. And also, because what you eat matters. So does how much you eat, how often you eat, and whether you’re eating before or after a workout.

To illustrate, compare yourself to your car. It has a certain size fuel tank. When you’re low on fuel, you go to the gas station (electric cars excepted) and fuel up. But what would happen if you were only a few gallons low and you tried to fill your tank with 10 gallons? Well, besides paying a small fortune you’d waste a lot of gas spilled onto the ground.

In the case of our body, our stomach is our fuel tank and food is fuel. So, what happens when you’re just a bit low (snack hungry) and you try to fill up your tank? It doesn’t spill out onto the ground, instead, it stretches our fuel tank and we feel bloated and full and tired. AND, that extra fuel is stored as fat.

Why fat? Why not store protein? Why… because our bodies love fat. This is because it’s the most efficient form of energy. Calories, though they have a bad rap, are actually our energy source. But, like fuel, too much is a waste. One gram of protein supplies the body with four calories. Carbs also supply us with four calories per gram. But, a gram of fat gives our bodies nine calories; more than double the amount of stored energy than protein and carbs.

If your body thinks getting food is going to be a problem (through caloric restriction, aka dieting), it will retain as much fat as possible to prepare for the perceived “lean” times ahead. Think about a bear gaining as much fat as possible and then living off that fat while hibernating through the winter.

Knowing all of this tells us to eat nutrient-dense food (not fat dense). Our bodies need protein to repair and build muscle. Carbs give us short-term energy. Yes, short-term; like for a workout. This is why you should consume carbs after your workout to replenish your short-term energy stores.

You’ve probably heard experts recommend eating five or six small meals a day. Doing this communicates to your body that getting nutrients isn’t a problem, so there’s no need to store fat. Fat then becomes your primary source of fuel/energy. The body is happy to burn fat because it’s not perceived as needed. Workout first thing in the morning before breakfast, when cortisol and adrenaline levels are low, and you’ll burn even more fat.

An excerpt from the-scientist.com noted, “Exercising before breakfast may have more health benefits than waiting until after the meal to get moving, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism in 2019.

Researchers led by Javier Gonzalez, a physiologist at the University of Bath in England, conducted the study on a group of 30 overweight, sedentary men. One group drank a carbohydrate-laden vanilla shake for breakfast two hours before moderate cycling, while another group drank it after the same exercise. Both groups exercised three times per week.

While riders in both cycling groups burned about the same number of calories each time they exercised, those in the group that worked out before drinking the shake burned about twice as many calories from fat per ride as the ones who had the shake beforehand.

This kind of study is also what fuels the intermittent fasting approach to dieting.

The article continued with, “While exercising before breakfast takes advantage of overnight fasting, similar results might be possible by abstaining from food at another time. ‘We believe that the key is the fasting period, rather than the time of day.’”

They call it the “fasting period” whereas, for me, I call it the time between dinner and dessert.

If you are able to ever-so-slightly shift your mindset from “food is fun” to “food is fuel,” it might help you make healthier choices. If that seems improbable, I recommend trying something called Temptation Bundling.

If you’re looking forward to that not-so-healthy, carb-laden snack, then bundle it with a workout. Once you’ve completed your workout, reward yourself with the food. After all, the best time for carb replenishment is following exercise. Eventually, you’ll enjoy the workouts more and more and those snacks may not hold the same appeal as they once did.

Who am I kidding? I’ll always love Oreos. But now, I derive the same amount of enjoyment from eating two Oreos as I did when I was eating… well, let’s just say, more than two. Bon appetite!

If you enjoyed reading this, please visit www.HarryKFitness.com where you can find more fitness information, download my free workout e-book, listen to my latest podcast on Spotify, and check out the Healthy Recipe page.

Have a fitness question? Send them to me, Your Personal Trainer, at PersonalTrainerQuestions@gmail.com and write ‘Ramona Sentinel’ in the subject line.

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