Ever feel discouraged because you couldn’t make it to the gym that day? We’ve all been there, but even if you miss a workout, it doesn’t mean that you’ve missed all your opportunities to burn some calories.

We’ve compiled a list from the BuiltLean community on Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube about ways you can burn more calories during your day-to-day so that even when you feel too pressed for time to hit the gym, you know you’ve still got at least 100 ways to burn more calories.

Here Are 100 Ways to Burn More Calories:

1. Take the Stairs Instead of The Elevator
2. On Days You Don’t Workout, Spend 10-15 Minutes Stretching
3. Get Better Rest So You Have More Energy To Workout Harder
4. Lift Heavier Weights To Burn More Calories
5. Take 5 Minutes Off Your Workout Time Without Changing The Exercises
6. Do 30 Pushups Before All Meals You Eat At Home
7. Add Half a Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper to Your Diet Once a Day
8. Learn To Play Squash – You Can Even Play Solo
9. Give Cross Training A Try
10. Take A Few Extra Steps Each Day – Track Your Steps By Wearing a Pedometer
11. Have Work Meetings While Standing, or Going For a Walk
12. Learn How To Surf
13. Do Jumping Jacks During TV Commercials
14. Have a Glass of Cold Water, Which Burns Calories During Digestion
15. Run On Soft Sand, Instead of the Sidewalk, or Track
16. When Lifting Weights, Use Strength Circuits^TM Instead of Straight Sets
17. Try New Partner Exercises – It Will Motivate You To Push Harder
18. If You’re Sitting At Work All Day – Stand Up Every Hour & Walk Around
19. Bike, or Walk To Work a Few Times a Week if possible
20. Jump Rope For 10 Minutes Every Day – Try BuiltLean’s Workout
21. Carry Your Shopping Bags Instead of Getting Them Delivered
22. Don’t Use the Drive Through When Ordering Food – Walk Inside
23. Do Less Single Joint Exercises (i.e. Biceps Curls), and More Multi-Joint (i.e. Step Ups)
24. Complete Every Workout With Interval Training, or Metabolic Conditioning Finishers
25. Eat More Protein – It Has a High Thermic Effect, So Calories Are Burned During Digestion (See: high protein diet
26. Build An Extra Few Pounds of Muscle
27. Play a Sport Once Per Week
28. Learn How To Play Soccer
29. Run For 10 Minutes A Day
30. Exercise 1 Extra Day Per Week
31. Do More Leg Exercises – They Burn More Calories
32. Add Progression To Your Workouts, So They Get a Become Harder Over Time
33. Listen to Fast Paced Music, Which Can Help Increase You Workout Intensity (See: Workout Playlist)
34. Play The Drums, Or Learn How To Play Them
35. Eat More Garlic
36. Stand Up Straight
37. Learn To Water Ski
38. Add An Incline When Walking, or Running on the Treadmill
39. Plant a Garden
40. Run, Don’t Walk, Up The Stairs
41. Keep Your Phone Across The Room So You Have To Walk To Reach It
42. Park In The Farthest Spot From Your Grocery Store
43. Take the Stairs Instead of the Escalator
44. Jump on a Trampoline
45. Add Weights While You Run
46. Shoot Some Hoops
47. Learn To Play Tennis
48. Repaint Your Living Room
49. Carry Your Golf Clubs When Playing Golf Instead Of Using A Golf Cart
50. Do Calf Raises While Brushing Your Teeth
51. Go Mountain Biking
52. Do Full Body Workouts With Weights
53. 10 Minutes on the Rowing Machine
54. Sign Up & Prepare for a 5K Race
55. Stand Up While You Type For 5 Minutes An Hour
56. Sprint 100m, Do 10 Burpees, Then Walk 100m. Repeat 5-10 times.
57. Wash Your Car
58. Learn how to Ski
59. Go Paddleboarding During The Summer
60. Walk While Taking Phone Calls
61. Rearrange Your Bedroom
62. Clean Your Bathroom
63. Learn To Play Hockey
64. Go Cross Country Skiing For A Day
65. Go Dancing
66. Try Hot Yoga
67. Do Jumping Jacks For 10 Minutes in Your Living Room
68. Throw Around A Frisbee
69. Learn How To Juggle
70. Sit on a Fitness Ball For An Hour
71. Learn To Skateboard
72. Plant a Tree
73. Learn To Breakdance
74. Walk Your Dog, Or Your Friends Dog
75. Add 10 Body Squats Between Each Upper Body Exercise
76. Run 1 Mile Once Per Week
77. Do 100 Push Ups Per Day
78. Use Combination Exercises That Work Multiple Muscle Groups At Once
79. Drink 1 Cup Of Green Tea
80. Use Primal Movement Exercises in Your Workout
81. Buy a Pull Up Bar So You Can Do Pull Ups At Home
82. Carry Your Basket Through the Supermarket – Don’t Push a Cart
83. Walk to Lunch – Don’t Order In
84. Spend Your Weekends Outside
85. Take a Spinning Class
86. Learn To Play Basketball
87. Foam Roll Every Time You Watch T.V.
88. Chop & Stack Firewood
89. Work Your Way Up To Weighted Pull Ups
90. Learn to Rock Climb
91. When You Run Errands, Really Run Some of Them
92. Do Abs Exercises Between Lifting Sets
93. Take Out the Trash
94. Do An Extra 2 Sets of Weights Each Workout
95. Carry Your Suitcase Instead of Rolling It
96. Learn How To Snowboard
97. Go Cross Country Skiing Instead of Downhill For a Day
98. Set A Goal Of Swimming 50 Consecutive Laps
99. Mow the Lawn for 20 Minutes
100. Laugh As Often As You Can

We hope you find some good suggestions from this list and will share your ways to keep those calories off.

Are there ways to burn more calories we missed?

The post 100 Ways To Burn More Calories appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

While walking around your city, you’ve probably seen a variety of yoga studios—everything ranging from Bikram to Anusara, Jivamukti, and Vinyasa yoga. Bikram is known for hot rooms and sweat-dripping bodies, while vinyasa is all about the flow of movements.

If your goal is to get lean and lose body fat, you might be wondering whether, or how, yoga fits into your program. There are a multitude of benefits to practicing yoga, but does yoga help with weight loss?

Yoga Only Burns 3-6 Calories Per Minute

In order to lose body fat, you have to create a deficit of calories. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight, and one pound of fat is equivalent to about 3500 calories.

Yoga classes often endure for about 60-90 minutes. According to research done by the American Council on Exercise, the average individual burns about 3-6 calories per minute practicing yoga, which equates to a total of only 180-360 calories burned during that class.¹ In contrast, a kettlebell workout burns about 13-17 calories per minute, which equals about 800+ calories burned in an hour.² That’s a significant difference in calorie expenditure.

While it depends on the type and intensity of the class– certain styles of yoga are much more rigorous such as power yoga, hot yoga, and vinyasa, whereas yin yoga, restorative, and hatha yoga are more gentle and slower-paced. ³ Regardless of the intensity of the yoga class, circuit training is still superior in terms of overall metabolic boost and calorie burn.

But even with the calorie difference, yoga has other benefits that can help the weight-loss individual.⁴

…But Yoga Can Still Be Effective For Weight Loss. Here’s Why

From 2000-2002, medical researcher and yogi Alan Kristal, in association with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, conducted a study on the effects of yoga on weight-loss. The study surveyed 15,500 middle-aged men and women about their physical activity and weight over time, and controlled for factors such as diet, health, and other forms of exercise that could cause changes in weight. The study found that both over-weight and normal-weight adults who regularly practiced yoga for at least 4 years were less likely to gain weight than those who did not practice yoga. In fact, those who were overweight and practiced yoga actually lost an average of 5lbs during the four-year period, whereas the overweight non-practitioners gained about 14lbs.⁵

Alan Kristal and the other researchers noted: The weight loss had nothing to do with burning calories. Kristal pointed out that, from a scientific standpoint it was unclear why practicing yoga helped people keep the weight off: “Except for very strenuous yoga practices, you don’t really burn enough energy to make any difference in terms of weight.”

If calorie expenditure didn’t account for weight maintenance or loss, what did? The researchers found a strong association between a regular yoga practice and mindful eating, which they did not find in other activities such as walking or running.⁶

How Can Yoga Help You Lose Weight?

Reasons that yoga might help the weight loss process include:

1. Effective stress management, reducing the likelihood of stress eating
2. Increased body awareness, specifically relating to hunger and satiety
3. Mindfulness and mindful eating

Although practicing yoga doesn’t burn the most calories, it might still have a place in your workout routine. An effective fat loss program that encourages maintenance of lean muscle and maximizes calorie burn should be founded on a combination of resistance training and cardiovascular activity. However, yoga could be used as active recovery and flexibility training between more intense workouts. The benefits of stress reduction and mindfulness associated with yoga could lead to improved sleep, better eating habits, and increased self-awareness, which could mean more weight loss and improved maintenance of weight loss results over time. Regardless of the exercise you’re doing, however, good nutrition is essential. If you’re not paying attention to your diet, you won’t see the results you want. Exercise right, eat clean, and you’ll be able to actualize your goals.

The post The Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Yoga appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

If you are among those who constantly worry about how many calories you burn, you’ll learn two important ideas in this article:

1. You can’t trust estimated calorie burn on cardio machines, because they are likely inaccurate, and
2. Worrying about calorie burn is not the path towards fitness success over the long term

Here are 3 reasons why estimated calorie burn on cardio machines is likely inaccurate:

Reason #1 – Estimated Calorie Burn Includes Your RMR

Everyone has a unique amount of calories they need to ingest to maintain their body weight. This is referred to as your resting metabolic rate (RMR), meaning that if you lay down all day and didn’t move you would still be burning calories just by being alive (breathing, organ function etc.) Your RMR is a huge determinant of how many calories you need to consume each day.

Treadmill and other cardio machines include RMR within their calorie estimates. So the calorie estimate you see on display is not just how many calories you have burned during your activity, but also how many calories you have burned just being alive during that time. This leads to an over inflation on how many calories you burned from exercise.

For example, if a 175 lbs man exercises for a half hour at a moderate pace, he will burn around 270 total calories…according to his machine. For an accurate count, he’d need to subtract around 40 calories from the 270 for the calories he used just by being alive for the half hour.

The greater your workout time and the heavier you are, the more overinflated the number becomes. If you rely on exercise to create a large caloric deficit, you’ll want to consider this over estimation.

Reason #2 – Cardio Machines Assume You Are A 180lb Man

Calorie estimations are very difficult because individuals vary so widely. In order to correctly estimate caloric expenditure, many factors need to be considered: total energy cost of exercise depends on weight, gender, age, height, amount of muscle, and disease state.

Treadmills rarely take the aforementioned into account. If you are exercising on a cardio machine and fail to give it any input such as your height, weight, or age, your estimates will be very off. The cardio machine will use a default runner based off a typical man weighing 160-180 lbs. If you weigh less then a typical man your calorie estimates will be over inflated, and vice versa.

Reason #3 – Cardio Machines Do Not Take Into Account Exercise Efficiency

Efficiency can be described as how easily your body uses calories to do work. Someone who is highly efficient would be able to do more exercise using fewer calories.

There are many factors that effect exercise efficiency1 that may also throw off the estimated calorie burn shown on a machine:

1. Muscle Fiber Composition – Fast twitch fibers are less efficient then slow twitch fibers. Thus your efficiency and potentially calories burned will depend on your genetic disposition and your overall training history.

2. Exercise Technique – Improved technique produces fewer extraneous body movements and increases efficiency.

Take for example, a competitive swimmer vs. a person who rarely swims. If asked to travel the same distance at similar speeds, the experienced swimmer would burn less calories due to smoother strokes and an understanding of buoyancy that make the activity require less effort.

The same applies to cardio machines. Although they are less technical then swimming those who improve their form will have different energy cost then those who are unfamiliar.

A relevant example is holding up your body on the handrails on a machine like the Stairmaster. Bracing yourself with your arms makes the activity easier, yet the machine fails to adjust for this measure.

3. Fitness Level – More fit individuals perform a given task at a higher efficiency because of decreased energy expenditure from non-exercise tasks such as temperature regulation, increased circulation, and waste removal.

The above is not meant to bash using cardio machines in your quest to lose fat. Increasing efficiency is not necessarily a bad thing for fat loss. With an increase in efficiency also comes with an increase in ability. More efficient exercisers can push themselves harder.

In fact, best fat loss practices encourage you to increase the intensity of your cardio workouts, not necessarily the duration.

How Do You Accurately Estimate Calorie Burn From Exercise?

Over all, there’s too much variation to get an accurate estimation of how many calories you burned if you rely on the number calculated by a cardio machine. If you really need the number of calories burned, it may be more accurate (and more time consuming) to calculate manually, or to rely on a calorie burn tracker like BodyBugg, which has its own limitations.

At the end of the day, it is important to get your diet in check so you don’t have to rely on the “burn it off” mentality. Understand that no amount of exercise will get you shredding fat if you’re not maintaining it with a proper diet. Attempting to out-exercise a bad diet is a losing proposition.

Consider weight training, followed by interval training, as your preferred method of burning fat. Throw in steady state cardio if you don’t want to limit your workout to strength training, but remember…don’t trust the machine.

The post 3 Reasons To Never Trust Estimated Calorie Burn On Cardio Machines appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

The good news is that ultimately stress comes from within and we can take specific steps to help manage stress. When the world feels like it’s caving in on you, these 5 tips can go a long way toward helping you relax, find some inner peace, and improve your health and well-being.

A few of the following 5 tips to manage stress are easy to implement, whereas others may take a little bit more planning. At the end of the day, the more you can incorporate into your life, the better your odds of managing stress for the long-term.

Manage Stress Tip #1 | Switch out Coffee for Green Tea

Both contain caffeine (allowing for a release of cortisol), but green tea also has an amino acid theanine, which is the precursor to the calming neurotransmitter, GABA. In other words, not only will you have a small energy boost, but you should also have an increased calming effect from drinking green tea over coffee.¹

Manage Stress Tip #2 | Deep Breathing

Taking 10 Deep Breathes helps stimulate a nerve that connects to the calming centers in your brain. Typically, taking 10 breathes at a rate of 4-5 seconds in, holding for 4-8 seconds and breathing out for 5-10 seconds can stimulate that nerve and cause an overall calming effect.²

Manage Stress Tip #3 | Workout Consistently

Working out helps to both control the increased inflammation from stress while also helping to improve your cell’s receptors for both insulin and leptin. In addition, working out helps to burn all of the extra fatty acids released from cortisol’s release. ³ If you can’t get a full workout in when stressed, sometimes going for a walk will help to burn off some energy and clear out your thoughts. Every little bit helps.

Manage Stress Tip #4 | Be Prepared with Healthy Food

The easiest way to control your blood sugar, especially when you’re overly stressed, is to have healthy food and snacks ready to go on a moment’s notice. By doing so, you help to break the insulin/cortisol cycle while helping regulate your brain’s neurotransmitters. By controlling your brain’s neurotransmitters, you allow your body the opportunity to better control your stress over the long-run. Typically, meats and protein-rich foods help to form the foundation of dopamine and acetylcholine (attention and focus) neurotransmitters, while healthy sources of carbs, such as fruits, vegetables and sweet potatoes help to create serotonin, which has a calming effect.

Manage Stress Tip #5 | Start a Grateful Log

Recent research has shown very positive results with starting a Grateful Log. A grateful log is relatively easy to do and simply requires you write down 5 things you’re grateful for, every day. By doing so, you allow yourself focus on the positive in your life, which helps to lower your overall stress levels and realize you might not have it “too bad.” You can start with things, such as your health, the ability to see, your family, a roof over your head, access to this article and anything else you can think of. Try not to repeat anything for two weeks straight and you might start seeing that “I have it pretty good.”

At the end of the day, these are 5 suggestions that have been shown to help decrease stress levels, but what’s more important is finding something that helps you to relax and control your stress levels.

Hope you enjoyed the article and were able to learn something that you can apply to your own life.

Do you have any tips that help you manage stress? Leave a comment!

The post 5 Simple Tips to Manage Stress appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

Every year, the American Psychological Association puts out a stress survey where they question over 1,000 Americans about their levels of stress. In 2011, over half of Americans (53%) reported having physical symptoms due to stress in the past month.

This article will detail some of the physical maladies of stress, how the stress response in your body works, in particular how it affects weight loss.

Stress Causes & Symptoms

You’re probably aware stress contributes to diseases, but did you know that stress is related to 7 of the top 10 killers in the US? Everything from the heart disease and cancer, to diabetes and suicide. In 2011’s APA Stress report, beyond work and family responsibilities, the economy, money worries, and family health problems rounded out the top 5 reasons people cited for stress in their lives.

In addition to all of these psychological factors that cause stress, you might have many physical stressors affecting your body without you even knowing. For example, poor sleep is a major stressor on your body yet most people report not getting enough sleep. Additionally, unknown food sensitivities, blood sugar dysregulation, drug supplies in the water, and poor air quality can all contribute to the stress-load on your body. I mention these additional physical reasons, not to scare you, but because, no matter the sources of the stressor, your body’s response to the stress is the same.

Your Body’s Response to Stress

Cortisol is released when your body perceives a stressor and acts as a low-level type of adrenalin released from your adrenal cortex. If you’ve heard of cortisol before reading this article, you’ve probably heard that it’s bad for fat loss and that you probably have too much of it from the amount of stress in your life.

The truth is a bit more complicated than that. Cortisol is a diurnal hormone, meaning your levels of cortisol should peak in the morning (to give you energy) and slowly drop down as the day progresses so you can fall asleep at night. Basically, cortisol is the hormone of energy and alertness. In a normal cortisol cycle, cortisol, in the absence of insulin, helps burn fat along with growth hormone in the morning.

Most people, though, don’t have a “normal” cortisol cycle. For example, most individuals “need” coffee in the morning. This means their cortisol production in the morning is lower than what it should be. Coffee, or more particular, caffeine helps in the morning by causing your body to release a small amount of cortisol. This cortisol release gives you the energy you need to get past the morning but can also cause an over-stimulatory effect on your adrenal cortex, making you rely more and more on coffee over time.

Another sign of a skewed diurnal signal is when you seem to get a burst of extra energy at night. This extra energy at night can cause even more problems as you go to bed later, get less sleep and wake up fatigued, yet again, the next day. This becomes a vicious cycle that can go on for years of fatigue in the morning, energy at night, and poor sleep overall.

How Stress Affects Weight Loss

Cortisol’s main job is to provide energy when confronted with a stressor. In hunter-gatherer times, stress was typically an acute situation. You were chased by a predator and either fought it or ran away as fast as you could. After the stressor was over, you went about your life. In today’s society, the stress is almost constant and the chronic nature of stress can cause a number of issues when it comes to weight loss and health, especially when combined with easy access to unhealthy foods.

When cortisol is chronically released from an over-abundance of emotional and physical stress your body reacts in three main ways that negatively affects fat loss:

Weight Loss Problem #1: Cortisol Makes Cells Less Responsive

First, cortisol affects the receptor sites of other hormones making the cells less responsive to their signals. For example, Type II Diabetes is a disease where sufficient insulin is produced, but your body’s cells can’t read the insulin signal. This is called insulin resistance and the onset of insulin resistance typically leads to diabetes when not acted upon with correct dietary and activity changes. When insulin remains high (as happens when you have insulin resistance) your body will not release fat from its fat cells. This basically traps the fat you have into their cells, even if you go on a diet. This is why for some people, low carb diets can work wonders (because they had underlying insulin resistance).

Leptin is another hormone that plays a key role in losing weight. Leptin is a hormone released from your fat cells and acts as a thermostat to gauge how much fat you have and how fast you’re losing it. When leptin levels are high and your brain can read the signal you feel full and don’t over-eat. If your brain can’t read the signal though you have leptin resistance and feel hungry all the time. Generally, if you have insulin resistance, you also have leptin resistance.

Excessive stress and it’s concurrent release of cortisol negatively effects the receptors for both insulin and leptin, making it harder for your body to read the signals of those hormones. If your body can’t read the signals for insulin, fat stays trapped in your cells. If you can’t read the signals for leptin, you’re hungry all the time. Both of these things place you on an uphill battle when it comes to losing weight.

Weight Loss Problem #2: Cortisol Increases Inflammation

The second way cortisol negatively effects fat loss is by increasing inflammation throughout the body, via very scientific names such as interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumor necrotic factor- alpha (TNF-A), etc.

Your body has different types of fat that reacts differently. For example, the fat under your skin – the fat that you can grab—is called subcutaneous fat. Another type of fat – lying deeper within your body and surrounding your organs—is called visceral fat. If you’ve ever seen someone with a “beer belly” then you’ve seen someone with a lot of visceral fat. Your body will preferentially store more visceral fat when under stress and why the waist-to-hip ratio can be a strong marker for health.

Visceral fat is considered more dangerous than subcutaneous fat for two reasons. First, visceral fat releases the same inflammatory signals cortisol does. Second, since it surrounds your organs, you increase your odds of organ damage.

Therefore, stress signals increase your likelihood of storing more visceral fat (unhealthy fat), while having more visceral fat increases the release of inflammatory signals. This causes a cycle of inflammation and increased visceral fat storage leading to more inflammation and so on.

Weight Loss Problem #3: Cortisol Dysregulates Hunger Hormones

The third way cortisol negatively effects fat loss is through a dysregulation of hunger hormones, in particular Ghrelin and Leptin. Leptin, as mentioned above, helps to control your appetite. When you’re overly stressed, leptin levels will drop, making you hungrier. “Growling Ghrelin” is a hormone released anytime you’re hungry and increases dramatically when you’re overly stressed.

The combination of a lower amount of the “anti-hunger” hormone Leptin, and an increase in the “hunger hormone” Ghrelin, causes people to over-eat. In particular, this combination has people reaching for fast-acting carb foods to spike their blood sugar as insulin helps blunt cortisol levels. In other words, you’re more prone to reach for the snickers bar than the broccoli and chicken because your body wants a quick release of sugar to help bring down your cortisol levels.

This can become another vicious cycle as high blood sugar causes an insulin spike, typically followed by a sharp drop in blood sugar. That drop in blood sugar causes your body to release cortisol to help stabilize your blood sugar. That increase in cortisol though also increases your hunger hormones (in particular Ghrelin) so you once again are more prone to reach for more sugary foods causing a rollercoaster of insulin spikes and dips.

After reading this far, you might feel as though there is no hope for you with all of these “vicious cycles.” The next article in this 2-part series is 5 simple tips to help manage the stress in your life so you can take control of these cycles once and for all.

The post Is Stress Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Results? appeared first on BuiltLean.com.

What is the Paleo Diet?

Unlike many other “diets,” the Paleo Diet is meant to be more of a change in lifestyle than a temporary solution to shed some pounds. It is based on the idea that humans existed as hunters and gatherers for over 2 million years before the Agricultural Revolution introduced grains and dairy products as staple foods to the human diet around 10,000 years ago.

Since our genetic makeup is nearly identical to what it was prior to the introduction of farming (it’s only changed about 0.02%), the Paleo Diet suggests that we are predisposed to eating things you could either hunt for or gather – game meat, roots, berries, nuts, etc – but are not meant to eat things like grains that have to be heavily processed before consumption. In a nutshell, we should be eating like our ancient caveman (and cavewoman) relatives. .

But what does it mean to eat like a caveman? Depending on who you ask it could mean a lot of things, but the basic idea is to only eat foods that can be found in nature and consumed in their raw states or with very minimal preparation. Essentially, anything that has to be refined or cooked extensively to be edible is out.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you should and shouldn’t eat on the Paleo Diet:

Good Foods

• - Lean meats
• - Fish
• - Vegetables
• - Fruit
• - Nuts/seeds (no peanuts, though…they are legumes)

Bad Foods

• - Grains
• - Beans and other legumes
• - Dairy products
• - Potatoes

Now, you might be scratching your head a bit: the good foods list has a bunch of quality consumables that you’ll find on just about any nutritional blueprint – no problem there; however, the bad foods list axes out a good chunk of the typical modern diet including some foods that are widely considered healthful (whole grains and yogurt, for example). Is Paleo throwing the baby out with the bathwater? This is the crux of the debate…

The Paleo Diet | Good Caveman vs. Bad Caveman

At face value, the Paleo Diet uses some pretty solid reasoning as to why these foods are verboten, but on further review, it can begin to seem a bit simplistic and overly-restrictive. Like so many other things in life, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle so let’s take a look at the no-fly list and see if we can’t find some common ground.

Grains

Taking front and center of the Paleo controversy is whether you should even be eating things like wheat, rice or corn, let alone making them the base of your food pyramid. Paleo advocates will point out that grains are not only difficult for humans to digest in their raw states, but they can actually be quite toxic.

Found on uncooked grains, a type of protein called “lectin” serves as a natural insecticide to plants, but also interferes with digestion in humans and is a significant cause of food poisoning around the world. Cooking reduces, but doesn’t completely destroy these toxins, which is why they are strictly off the Paleo menu…

Take into consideration, though, that the rice-based diet of the Japanese people has made them the healthiest and longest-lived population on the planet.¹ Also keep in mind that a lot of top athletes and trainers swear by starting every day with a big bowl of steel-cut oats, which are packed with vitamins and minerals and are generally considered one of the healthiest foods around.

Grains may or may not be the villain that hardcore Paleo proponents make them out to be, but one thing both sides can agree on is to stay away from refined grains (white flour, in particular). The refining process strips the grain of most of its nutrients and leaves only a high-carb, calorie-dense powder. Whole grains are much more nutritious and also packed with fiber.

Beans/Legumes

Like grains, many beans are rife with lectins and are only edible if cooked extensively or fermented. Kidney beans and soybeans ², especially, can be quite toxic if eaten raw. In fact, as few as 4 or 5 raw kidney beans can bring on typical symptoms of food poisoning – and undercooked beans are thought to be even more toxic!^{3 4}

Peanuts⁵ are actually edible in their raw state, but are very susceptible to mold and fungus. Of particular interest is aflatoxin, a poison produced by the fungus Aspergillus flavus. Twenty times more toxic than DDT, aflatoxin is known to cause liver cancer in lab animals and is thought to be a significant contributor to liver cancer cases in Africa where peanuts are a dietary staple. Improved handling and dry roasting have greatly reduced the risk of aflatoxin, but the Paleo Diet again says we’re better off without Mr. Peanut.⁶

If you’re sad now because you love peanut butter and chili (preferably not together), you will be comforted to know that a) peanuts undergo rigorous testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make sure no aflatoxins find their way to your belly and b) proper preparation greatly reduces the chances of beans making you feel not so magical. ⁷ Boiling kidney beans for 10 minutes almost entirely mitigates the toxins, but be careful when using a slow cooker, as the temperature may not get high enough to do the job.

Most beans, though, are considered quite healthy since they are a good source of protein, fiber, and complex carbohydrates. Cutting them out entirely limits your nutritional arsenal, but may be an option if you’re going the low-carb route. Peanuts, on the other hand, are not only a great source of monounsaturated fats and protein, but recent studies have shown that they rival berries, apples and beets for their antioxidant properties. Can you really turn your back on a food that’s been shown to protect against gallstones, Alzheimer’s disease and certain cancers?

Dairy Products

Can you guess how many animals besides humans drink milk after weaning? Zero. That’s because mammals only produce milk long enough to get their young through infancy, at which point they are weaned from their mothers and lose the ability to process lactose. In fact, most humans around the world trouble with dairy – it is estimated that over 75% of the adult population is lactose intolerant to some degree. ⁸

Dairy did not even play a factor in the human diet until early Europeans began domesticating cattle for about 10,000 years ago. If you can make it through a cheese pizza with no problems, you are likely descended from those pioneering individuals and part of the other 25% that has what is called “lactase persistence”.

While lactose (with an “o”) is the type of sugar in milk, lactase (with an “a”) is the protein your body produces to digest it. Everyone starts out with the genes to make lactase, but they stop working after infancy in most people. If you are descended from those early milkstache-wearing farmers, though, your body continues to produce it and you’ll typically have no problems with dairy.

The Paleo Diet doesn’t really make this distinction, though. It figures since humans were not originally intended to drink milk, you shouldn’t either. That is not necessarily bad since milk is fairly high in sugar and a lot of people have problems with lactose, but you’ll also be missing out on a good source of protein and calcium. Additionally, yogurt has been shown to promote gastrointestinal health, boost immune response, lower bad cholesterol, raise good cholesterol and increase fat loss. If you’re not intolerant, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

Potatoes & Starchy Vegetables

Starchy vegetables, potatoes in particular, are a matter of some debate when it comes to the Paleo Diet. Many advocates say true root vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes are okay, but regular potatoes and other tubers are not. Others say any starchy vegetable is okay in moderation. Still others say no starchy vegetables at all because they can be toxic (like cassava and green potato) and require too much processing to eat.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say carrots and sweet potatoes are ridiculously good for you, but regular potatoes are not quite as cut-and-dried. Many people will point to their high glycemic index and carbohydrate load as proof of their evilness, but if you live an active lifestyle, that’s actually not a bad thing. If you’re just going to sit in front of the TV all night, you might want to pass on the potatoes and have a salad instead, but that certainly doesn’t make them unhealthy. In fact, potatoes have lots of vitamins and minerals and have been shown to help protect against cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems. So there’s no need to be afraid of spuds in moderation, just don’t overdo it with the butter and salt!

So, Should You Eat Like a Caveman or Not?

It might seem like I’ve come off as overly-critical of the Paleo Diet but I’m actually a pretty big fan of the concept. Getting back to a simpler, more-natural diet is really conducive to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but as usual, the devil’s in the details.⁹

Saying that our ancient tribal ancestors ate a particular way is a somewhat superficial endeavor since they were much more worried about survival than whether or not something was Paleo-friendly. What they ate also varied greatly by region – the traditional Inuit diet, for example, is almost entirely comprised of meat with 50-75% of calories coming from fat. Ancient Polynesian diets, on the other hand, were more balanced with fish, coconut, taro and breadfruit. The Maasai tribes of Africa survive mostly off of raw meat and milk and blood from cattle. There is no singular tribal diet.

Humans are resilient, adaptive creatures. We do anything we can to survive, whether that is picking berries from a bush or running down an antelope. One of the biggest problems today is that we no longer have to expend any energy to get our food. It’s processed, packaged, and shipped to convenient locations that we spend only minutes driving to. We consume massive quantities of easily-accessible, non-nutritious, refined foods, then spend all day sitting at our desks, in our cars, or at home on the sofa and wonder why the world is getting fatter.

The real benefit of the Paleo Diet is not in the canon of what particular foods we should be eating, but in reminding us of how we are meant to live. Humans evolved to thrive on an active lifestyle eating all-natural foods – no Burger King, no Easy Mac, no gallons of carbonated sugar water. Our ancient cousins had much shorter lifespans due to things like infection, exposure, and being eaten by predators, but overall were much healthier and stronger than today’s typical city-dweller. Imagine how healthy and long-lived we could be with access to modern medical care and things not trying to eat us! With obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rising out of control, maybe it’s time to look at our roots and get back to basics.

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The common belief is that this burning sensation is caused by lactic acid build up in our muscles, which eventually forces us to stop exercising.

But does lactic acid really cause muscle burn?

The answer is a resounding “No”, it doesn’t. In fact, lactic acid build up helps reduce the burn.

While this article is a bit technical, it will help you understand the true dynamics of why you feel muscle burn during exercise and what lactic acid really is.

How Lactic Acid Build Up Works

Your body needs energy to function and glucose is its primary fuel source during exercise. Under a process called glycolysis, your body breaks down the glucose into a substance called pyruvate.

Then, within the cell, the pyruvate can be converted into (1) water and carbon dioxide through the Krebs cycle (a series of chemical reactions that occur using pyruvate to generate energy) and (2) oxidative phosphorylation (process for the creation of ATP – adenosine triphosphate – that cells use for energy). This requires oxygen.

So, during times when there is not enough oxygen, such as when you are exercising intensely, the cell cannot keep up production of ATP to meet its energy demands, leading to increased glucose break down into pyruvate, Now the pyruvate, instead of going through the Krebs cycle, is converted to lactate.

Even when there is adequate oxygen, in some cells, lactate is still made continuously. Note that lactate is created and not lactic acid.

While lactate is actually the salt of lactic acid, there is a big difference in what they do.¹

Lactate, as the salt, is missing a hydrogen ion or proton. Therefore, their properties inside the cell differ. A measurement of the amount of the protons tells you how acidic something is. Lactate, not having any protons, is not acidic. Lactate, because it is not acidic, is NOT the cause of the burning sensation in your muscles.

OK, Then What Causes Muscle Burn?

If neither lactate, nor lactic acid causes muscle burn, then what does?

Remember ATP, that substance used as an energy source by your cells? During exercise, your body uses large quantities of ATP to meet your muscle cells’ high energy demand. When you use this ATP, it produces a proton.

And what happens when protons are produced? The area becomes more acidic. As the protons increase in number they come into contact with nerves near the muscles, creating the sensation known as muscle burn. As you continue to work your muscles, you use more ATP, producing protons and increasing the acid in the muscles.

None of this involves lactate or lactic acid.

Lactic Acid Build Up Reduces Muscle Burn

It might be hard to believe, with the bad rep given to lactic acid & lactate over the years, but they’re actually beneficial.² Lactate in the cell can act as a buffer by reducing the cell’s acidity.

But the most benefit comes when lactate leaves the cell. At this point, it can either enter other cells, like your heart cells, to generate energy for them. Or, it can undergo the Cori cycle, where it is taken from the muscles and brought to the liver to be turned back into glucose and recycled.

Lactic acid is not your enemy, but a perfect fuel source for your muscles. Helping to reduce the acidity that comes from exercising, it is also used as a vast energy source for muscles to work on endurance.

So, next time you exercise, you can thank lactic acid for keeping your muscles moving!

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The short answer is “no.” Muscle and fat are two fundamentally different types of tissue, so muscle never degenerates into fat, and fat cannot be transformed into muscle.

The components your body uses to make each are not the same, so while it can appear that one is morphing into the other, there are actually two processes at work.

So, what’s actually happening when we witness dramatic changes in our body composition over time?

Fat Loss Overview | Does Muscle Turn To Fat?

Think about fat and muscle within the framework of two broad categories that are already relatively familiar—diet and exercise. The prime factor in how much, or how little fat you have is food. The determining factor in the amount of muscle you have is stress (like exercise) on your body.

Much more than a band of excess tissue around your waist or on your thighs, fat is made of thousands of unique cells that have the ability to hold onto fluid. Fat cells respond to conditions in the body in three ways—shrink when there is less food energy available, stay the same when there are adequate calories, or grow if there is excess.

Food energy does not have to begin as fat to be stored as fat. Your body has to break everything you eat into pieces small enough to get into individual cells, which means carbohydrates go through multiple processes to become glucose, protein ultimately gets broken into amino acids and fat will wind up as fatty acids. Your body does not typically lose fat cells unless you surgically remove them, and your body will not usually make more individual cells past puberty, although if you gain a tremendous amount of weight as an adult, your body will adapt by inciting cells to divide.

Muscle Gain Overview | Does Muscle Turn To Fat?

Hundreds of muscle fibers work together to form each muscle cell, where the quantity of fibers is fixed. Each individual fiber is capable of getting bigger and of packing more material into the same space.

Muscle cells also become more efficient through improved signaling and coordination in the body, which happens in response to challenges that force the muscle beyond its “comfort zone.” Muscles hypertrophy (grow bigger) by experiencing stress: only the muscles being taxed have to undergo modification. Muscles atrophy when they’re no longer subjected to the same demands under which they were constructed. This means that muscle building can be location-specific, whereas fat storage and loss are systemic in nature.

While your body will not physically transform fat to muscle, or let muscle become fat, your choices and habits dictate how much fat or muscle you maintain. Remember that your decisions have the most impact on your fitness and health goals: be strategic and live actively!

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