Train Your Metabolism to Survive and Thrive During the Holidays

-- Andrew Eaton, CSCS

Hard to believe, but the holidays are just around the corner. Every year, they are accompanied by the three Fs; family, food, and FAT! In the next few weeks, stories will pop up all over the internet about how much weight the average American will gain during the holidays, just like they do every year. This year, however, I’m going to give you a strategy to not only keep those holiday pounds off, but burn more calories after each meal!

The first thing that needs to be understood is that you are not ‘stuck’ with your metabolism; you can train it and change it, much like your muscles. The primary keys to training both are commitment and consistency to three things: challenging resistance training, supportive nutrition, and intelligent interval training.

If you’ve read my articles online, you know that I liken the metabolism to lighting a fire and keeping it burning. (If you haven’t read my articles online, what are you waiting for?) When you wake up in the morning, the fire is burning very low, and needs to be stoked with good fuel – food – in order to get it re-started and working for you. Poorly fueled fires give off limited energy and go out quickly, making the choice of food very important.

In a nutshell, the best fuels to keep your fire burning - and to keep your metabolism working - are high-fiber carbohydrates, found in whole-grain breads, cereals and pastas; and lean proteins, found in fish, eggs, and better cuts of chicken, beef, and pork. Some fats are acceptable, particularly those in fish oils and flax oils, beans, and nuts, particularly walnuts, almonds, and pecans.

In order to keep your metabolism working at peak efficiency, it needs to be stoked with good fuels at regular intervals – before it has a chance to go out. The optimum interval to be consuming combinations of lean proteins, high-fiber carbs, and healthy fats is every three hours. That means, if you have breakfast at 7AM, you should eat again around 10AM, 1PM, 4PM, and 7PM, with a possible smaller meal around 10PM. You may be thinking that it sounds like a lot of food, or wondering how much you should eat at any given meal. Quite simply, each meal should be filling enough to last you 3 hours.

This is pretty easy to fine tune if you jot down what you eat, what time you ate, and when your hunger started to return. No counting calories! If you have a meal, and get hungry again before three hours elapses, then the meal probably wasn’t enough. Likewise, if you have breakfast at 7AM and aren’t remotely hungry until 11AM, breakfast was likely too heavy.

The benefits to this supportive nutrition strategy are many. You’ll be better in tune with your body. You’ll be less hungry at lunch and dinner, making it easier to make better food choices, or to consume smaller portions. You’ll condition your body to be a calorie-burning machine, ready to speed up your metabolism whenever food is introduced. If you start this plan Monday, you should be reaping noticeable benefits by Friday!

Resistance training is extremely important if burning fat is your goal. Stored bodyfat is a fuel, and fuels are burned almost exclusively inside muscle cells. Hence, adding lean muscle to your frame via resistance training is a great way to increase your metabolic rate! There are some general guidelines to creating a time-efficient muscle-building training program.

First, choose weightloads that are challenging enough to permit only 9 to 12 repetitions. If you’re using weights that allow 15 to 20+ repetitions, you’re not challenging the muscles to increase their capacity for work. Research shows that maximum muscle increases happen in this training range.

Second, choose multi-joint exercises - motions that require multiple muscles to work together. Exercises that target isolated muscles, like biceps curls, leg extensions, etc, are great for those specific areas, but for the sake of total calorie burn, and increased efficiency of your workout, it is better to choose exercises that challenge more than one muscle at a time. Examples are push-ups, rows, squats, bench presses, pulldowns, and lunges. Use the same exercises for three to four weeks, then choose different exercises, and commit to working as hard as possible for another 3 to 4 weeks.

Third, pick only one exercise for each major muscle group and work as hard as you can for 3 to 4 sets. Instead of doing 3 sets of 3 different chest exercises, followed by 3 sets of different leg exercises, pick one multi-joint exercise for each of those muscle groups, and move as much weight/load as possible with good form for 3 to 4 sets of 9-12 repetitions. A little trick – time your sets! A set of 12 repetitions should take no more than 48 seconds. Try a one second lift, a one-second hold/squeeze, and a two-second lowering; you’ll be working smarter, more efficiently, and will reap better results!

Interval training is the final key. It has been documented that long, steady aerobic training is not an effective mechanism to lose bodyfat. The body adapts positively to challenge, so you may need to dial up the intensity of your aerobic training. Interval training is simply an alternation between different levels of intensity. Like the weight training, it takes some commitment to work harder than your body is accustomed to. The benefits, however, are increased caloric burn, increased fat burn, increased aerobic capacity, lower resting heart rates, and better heart-rate recovery. An added bonus – interval training reaps these benefits with exercise sessions that are shorter in duration than typical aerobic workouts.

A beginner interval training session on a treadmill might look like this:

3m walking at 3.5 - 4mph

30s running at 6mph

1m walking

45s running at 6mph

1m walking

1m running at 6mph

1m walking

30s running at 6.5mph

1m walking

45s running at 6.5mph

1m walking

1m running at 6.5mph

1m walking at 3.5

1m walking at 3.0

1m walking at 2.5

The whole session would take 15:30. You can dictate the speeds based upon your current level of fitness, as well as the length of the work (running) and rest (walking) intervals. If you wanted to train for 30 minutes, you could skip the last two walking intervals and repeat the entire training, adding the walk to the end. Similar programs can be designed for elliptical machines, bikes, etc. If you need assistance, let me know!

So there you have it: a complete plan of attack to keep holiday pounds at bay! No more excuses - start fueling your inner fire, and get stoked!