fat

Weight loss through massage therapy

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Women using fat belt machines in the 1950's

Source: Diettogo.com

It sounds too good to be true. Get a massage and lose weight. It reminds me of the images of the vibrating fat belt machines from the 1950′s. Certainly the notion of vibrating fat off the body has been debunked by now, yet I still read of spas and massage therapists claiming to be able to break up fat cells through massage therapy or some other technique that “melts” off the inches.

Well here’s the skinny about metabolism. Food is potential energy in the form of calories. When we eat, the body breaks down the energy from food and directly uses it for all functions of living including: breathing; heart pumping; thinking; maintaining body temperature; all muscular movement; cellular and tissue repair; and the digestion of more food. The human body over hundreds of thousands of years has evolved a very efficient method of storing excess energy for sustaining life in between meals, whether that is a few days or only a few hours. Energy not immediately needed to sustain life gets stored as fat.

Fat is a very dense supply of stored energy. Each pound of fat contains about 3500 calories. That’s more than the average adult requires for living a normal, active lifestyle for an entire day! Still, fat is not the body’s preferred energy source. Carbohydrate is where the body likes to get it’s energy first. If carbs (sugars, starches, alcohols) are not available, only then will the body begin to metabolize fat.

So when a particular massage technique is touted as able to break up subcutaneous fat tissue allowing the fat to be re-absorbed into the body, I wonder how that “freed up” fat is expected to be metabolized. Without a way to metabolize this fat, the body will simply re-store it again, most likely in the same location that it was freed from.

There is researched and documented evidence of the diuretic effect of some massage therapy techniques like lymphatic drainage which can temporally achieve a reduction in body weight, but this is lost water, not lost fat. Losing the excess fat is what will improve physical health for most people.

The only way I know to metabolize stored body fat is to create a negative caloric balance by decreasing food intake and at the same time increasing physical activity. This is where massage therapy does help.

The positive effects of massage therapy for facilitating recovery from physical activity have been well researched and documented. Massage therapy has a direct impact on the circulatory system as it loosens muscle and tissue fibers and moves fluids into those spaces, which allows for greater amounts of oxygen and nutrients to reach those cells for metabolism. This loosening of the muscle fibers also restores the plastic and elastic function of the muscle itself which aids in its recovery from physical activity. This allows you to resume your physical activity sooner and at the same or higher intensity, helping you burn more fat!

Let’s not also discount the fact that massage therapy just plain feels good and creates a sense of emotional well-being. This feeling is not just a “fat-free reward” for your efforts to lose weight. It is the doorway to reconnecting a positive state of awareness about your body, which reinforces your resolve to improve your fitness through more physical activity. Physiologically, this good feeling arises from the activation of the para-sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for inducing the sleep state where the body repairs itself from your workout during the day. Massage therapy therefore can also help you achieve better sleep overnight so you can resume your physical activity and burn more fat in the morning!

So yes, massage therapy can help you lose weight, but only in support of the efforts you make in choosing low calorie/nutrient rich foods along with daily physical activity that exceeds the amount of calorie you eat.

Resources

Massagetherapy.com: Weight Loss and Bodywork

EHow.com: Massage & Weight Loss

Livestrong.com: Lymphatic Massage for Weight Loss

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Paul Kulpinski is a licensed massage therapist, holistic wellness educator and co-founder of Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona. Information contained in this blog should not be taken as medical advice. Readers are advised to validate the information presented here with other sources including your personal physician for information specific to you.

Counting Thanksgiving Calories

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The 2011 holiday season is upon us, so it’s time to remind ourselves how those holiday feasts can really pack on the pounds if your aren’t paying attention. Sure the holiday season is a time to indulge, so go ahead and treat yourself. But if you do it with the right intention, you’ll be able to enjoy the festivities and still feel good about yourself.

First, remember that the body works on a simple formula: energy in minus energy out equals energy stored. Or put another way: food eaten – activity = fat stored. Now, fat can either be stored or lost depending on the balance of the other side of the equation. If activity exceeds food eaten, there will be a negative result in the fat stored, or a net fat loss. Let’s look at some real numbers, but first let’s better understand what the activity part of the equation really means.

By “activity”, I’m referring to the body’s Total Metabolic Rate (TMR). The TMR is the sum of the Basil Metabolic Rate (BMR), plus exercise and all physical activity, plus the energy used in digesting food, plus the energy used to adjust to external temperature. For most people the TMR for women is around 2000 calories per day and for men is about 2500 calories per day. (Calculate your personal TMR here) So basically, if you consume more food calories than your TMR in a day, you’ll start storing fat. If you consume fewer food calories than your TMR in a day, you’ll start losing fat.

Remember, that a pound of fat is about 3500 calories. That’s way more than most people’s daily TMR and part of the reason that fat loss takes time. However, just 100 extra calories a day is enough to add a pound of fat by the end of a month! Now, granted body metabolism is a bit more complicated than I’m illustrating here, but I hope you get the idea, especially when faced with the variety of holiday food choice ahead of you over the next month.

My suggestion: instead of focusing only on one meal, like Thanksgiving, look at your total caloric intake and total metabolic rate over the course of a week. This gives you much more flexibility to make adjustments on either side of the minus sign. That way you can increase your weekly physical activity to compensate for a big Thanksgiving meal.

Just for fun, here’s a neat little holiday calorie counter to help illustrate the balance between calories in and calories out. Enjoy it, and enjoy your holiday season with lots of festivities and lots of fun physical activity to balance your equation.

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Avoiding the New Year’s Day Weight Loss Resolution

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As I write this we are only one week into the holiday season of feasts, office parties, and sugar plum treats and just 31 days away from the New Year and the popular resolution to lose some weight. Maybe this year could be different. Maybe this year, we could avoid adding the pounds during the next 31 days that we will resolve to remove 32 days from now.

First, let’s face some facts. When we use the term weight as in “I’ve gained 15 pounds just from Thanksgiving” or “I need to lose some weight from all those holiday parties,” what we’re really talking about is fat. We make the mistake of substituting our fat gain with the notion of weight gain. Granted, if you add fat to your body, you will gain some weight. But if we are only focused on weight, we are missing the mark.

Fat is by design the most efficient mechanism for our body to store energy. It is so efficient that fat can hold 2.25 times the number of calories (energy) per pound than either carbohydrate or protein. That’s why the human body evolved the ability to efficiently store energy in this very portable structure. Look at it this way, 1 pound of fat contains 3500 calories. That’s easily a two day’s supply of energy in just one pound!

In a balanced diet, we take in calories from three sources: protein (lean meat, beans, eggs, dairy, soy), fat (animal, plant, nut), carbohydrate (vegetables, fruits, grains, sugar and everything else that isn’t protein or fat). The body burns up the calories from each of these food sources in two ways:

Basic Body Function (Basil Metabolism): breathing, heart and circulatory function, glandular activity, cellular activity, digesting food, regulating body temperature and such.
Physical Activity: walking, climbing stairs, dusting, mopping, bicycling, swimming, rugby playing, climbing Mt. Everest, and so on.

You’ll notice that you don’t have much control over your basil metabolism. These functions are pretty automatic. What you do have control over however are your voluntary physical activities. These are activities that use skeletal muscle to initiate the physical movement. The only difference is the type and intensity of the physical activity you choose. You are free to make your physical activity housecleaning or climbing Mt. Everest, yet the Himalayan trek will burn up a whole lot more calories than applying the floor wax even though they both are using many of the same muscles.

So if you are only mopping the kitchen, but eating like your on the summit team for Everest, you’ll be eating more calories than your muscles need. Since the body never lets a good calorie go to waste, it automatically puts it around your waist for future use. After all, your body never knows when your mind might actually force it to attempt a summit of Everest. That’s how we become over-fat and during the holidays we are at the greatest risk for this pattern.

During the month of December, the average person will add about 1-2 pounds of fat. That’s equivalent to eating an extra 225 calories per day that isn’t burned off by physical activity.

The reason is all of those holiday parties, feasts and snacks provide enough calories to climb mountains, while at the same time we are slowly decreasing our physical activity (if we were active at all). Our physical activity decreases for a variety of reasons, like less daylight, colder temperatures, and less time in general because we are attending all of those holiday parties. So it’s not just about too many calories, it’s also about less activity which allows our muscles to weaken and atrophy which reduces their ability to burn calories. Do you see the vicious cycle?

So now, more than at any other time of the year, it’s critical to keep up your exercise routine to maintain the muscle mass that will burn the calories you eat. If you’ve already begun to lighten your workout, don’t fret, just get back onto the routine before you get any further into the holiday season.

Secondly, don’t obsess about all of the temptations. Go ahead and indulge a bit and don’t deny yourself. Do keep it in moderation however. Ask yourself before you eat: “am I hungry?” If you are, what do you want to spend your calories on? Choose well and you’ll feel good about what you are eating and you’ll be honoring your body without overloading it with excess energy that will have to be stored for tomorrow.

By maintaining or even increasing your physical activity now, you’ll be less likely to add the additional fat that prompts the New Year’s weight loss resolution. More on that one next month.

Happy Holidays!

Resources:

Covert Baily Fitness

Boost Your Metabolism with Weight Lifting

Why Food Turns into Body Fat

The Confusing Calorie

How Calories Work

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

The Pain of Losing Weight

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It’s a myth that Americans are obsessed with losing weight, according to Benjamin Radford. He says that “if Americans were truly committed to getting fit and losing weight, they would eat less and exercise more”. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In fact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2004 that two thirds of Americans are overweight, while only one third of Americans get regular exercise.

This underscores Radford’s point, that American’s really aren’t interested in losing weight. In his article Fat and Happy: Why Most People Don’t Diet, he cites a 2002 Glamour magazine survey of over 11,000 readers who were asked what they would be willing to give up to lose weight permanently. The findings: 75% would not give up eating dessert, 41% would not pay $3000 to be permanently thin, and 25% would not give up anything to lose weight.

What’s concerning is how this attitude is affecting the rise in childhood obesity. Results from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey showed that children will eat what their parents eat. Surprised? More specifically:

- Teens are 40% more likely to drink soda every day if their parents do the same.

- Teens are 16% more likely to eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables if their parents do the same.

- 48% of the teens who have parents that drink soda daily also eat fast food at least once a day. Of the teens whose parents did not drink soda daily, only 39% of them ate fast food daily.

- 45% of the teens whose parents did not eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables ate fast food daily. Only 39% of the teens whose parents eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables reported eating fast food daily.

This year, the CDC reported that 37% of children (age 2 – 19) are over weight and 16% of them are obese which puts them at a higher risk for health issues like type-2 diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. What’s more alarming is that 50% of those children became overweight before reaching the age of 2 and 90% by age 5!

The lead researcher in this study, Dr. John Harrington says, “this study indicates that we may need to discuss inappropriate weight gain early in infancy to affect meaningful changes in the current trend of obesity”.

But it seems that it’s just too painful for adults to do that, for themselves and for their children.

Results from a study published in this month’s issue of Clinical Pediatrics, show that 71% of parents have a false perception of their child’s weight. Of the 150 children aged 2 – 5 years participating in the study, about 1/3 of them were overweight or obese, yet 85% of all of the parents reported their child as being “about the right weight” to a written question. Researchers also used drawings of various body sizes and asked parents to identify the body size that most closely matched their child. 20% of the parents with overweight or obese children actually chose the drawing representing a body that was below healthy body weight!

Who are we fooling here folks? It’s time to get brutally honest with ourselves about our relationship to food and our avoidance of exercise. We keep looking for the cause of our overweight condition around us, instead of looking into the mirror to avoid the pain of the current reality. But facing that reality is the first step to making new choices in the moment. Not only do we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our children to recognize the outcome of our food and exercise choices.

The good news is, you can begin making new choices right now – once the pain of staying overweight begins to outweigh your fear of the pain of exercising and changing your choice of foods.

Resources:

Parents Lowball Heavy Tots’ Weight

Parents Blamed for Childhood Obesity

Fat and Happy: Why Most People Don’t Diet

Chubby Babies May Become Obese Teens

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

The Brain on Sugar Substitutes

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The number of sugar substitutes has proliferated over the past few years as Americans desire the sweet taste but fear the calories. While the debate on the impact of whether artificial sweetners actually help people lose weight is still under fierce debate, new research shows the difference to how the brain perceives artificial sweetners and sugar even though the taste buds may be fooled.

This new researches comes from the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualize how the brain responds to the different sweetners. Subjects drank two orange flavored drinks, one sweetened with sugar, the other sweetened with a mix of the artificial sweetners aspartame, acesulfame K, cyclamate and saccharin.

The mix of artificial sweetners were formulated to match the real tast of suger as closley as possible. The subjects were also given the different drinks during different days to reduce the subjects ability to taste the difference.

What they found was that both drinks stimulated the amygdala, the brain region that triggers the sense of pleasure. But only the drink with sugar activated the caudate, the part of the brain that senses the intake of calories and operates independently from the sensation of taste.

This supports research dones at the University of Birmingham in Britan that showed improved muscle performance from athelets who meerly rinsed their mouths with sugar water, compared with no improvement when athletes did the same with artificially sweetened water.

What the research is pointing to is the possibility that the artificial sweeteners are whetting the body’s appetite for calories. When the calories don’t arrive, the brain stimulates a stronger hunger response which may lead a person to actually consume more calories as a response then they would have if they simply consumed sugar.

One solution may be to skip the artificial sweetners and in the case of drinks, sip the drink slowly. Other research showed that when subjects drank a sugary drink, they naturally drank less when their sip size was smaller. That reminds me of the advice my grandmother gave me as a kid: eat (and drink) slowly and chew your food so your brain can catch up with your stomach.

Additional Links:

Los Angeles Times

Wikipedia

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Diet Fad: Pregnancy Hormone Injections

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There’s the grapefruit diet, the vinegar diet, the cigarette diet, the whiskey diet – you name it there’s probably a fad diet built around it. In fact, bizarre diet crazes date back to the early 1800′s in the United States. One of those diet fads has been making a comeback in the past year or so: the pregnancy hormone diet.

Here’s the premise. Daily injections of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) a hormone produced in women during pregnancy, will free up stored fat and reprogram the set point for body weight in the hypothalamus. hCG is manufactured in the placenta of the expectant mother to unleash body fat to nourish the growing fetus. The theory is that when not pregnant, the presence of this hormone by injection would free up fat to be burned during normal activity. This idea was first proposed in 1954 by a British physician A.T.W. Simeons and proponents of the diet claim that successful results happen when following Dr. Simeons’ guidelines.

Here’s the catch. Dr. Simeons requires dieters to restrict their daily caloric intake to only 500 calories! Well it stands to reason that anyone who only eats 500 calories a day is going to lose weight! Remember that when calories expended exceeds calories consumed, the result is weight loss. But what people who love this diet claim is that the hCG injections curb their hunger pangs so that living on only 500 calories feels comfortable with no cravings. Sounds wonderful, right? Well the problem is that these anecdotal stories can’t be duplicated in any research of the diet.

Numerous research studies dating back to 1973 found no significant difference in weight loss, percent of weight lost, hip/waist circumference or reduction in hunger sensations from those on a 500 calorie diet with hCG injections and those on a 500 calorie diet with placebo injections. The injections just don’t seem connected to the weight-loss process. It’s got to be the calories.

While there doesn’t seem to be any proven side-effects of the hCG injections, some have reported increased mood swings, nausea and bloating. There is also increased risk of blood clots with any type of hormone therapy. Additionally, there is research linking the presence of hCA in the bloodstream with memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The FDA has approved hCG for use in fertility treatment, but has not approved its use for weight loss. The agency has taken a strong stand against it, including requiring warning labels on the packaging of hCG against its use in weight loss treatment.

The bottom line is that our body weight and fat percentage is a reflection of our relationship to the food we eat and the world around us. Changing your body weight and fat percentage requires lifestyle changes. It’s a complex process that does not have a quick fix. While the calorie in/calorie out formula may address the physical component of energy consumption/energy storage, for those who continually struggle with being overweight despite their eating and exercise habits, the longer term solution may lie not in an injection, but in achieving a higher awareness of who they are in the world.

Source Information:

ABC 4 Investigation: Pregnancy Hormone for Weight Loss?

CalorieLab

HCG Use for Weight Loss

Research Backs Link Between Pregnancy Hormone and Alzheimer’s

Human Chorionic Gonadotropin

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Diet Fads in American History

Dr. Weil

Stroke and Blood Clots: Hormone Therapy

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT