Why Drawn Out Workouts Can Keep You Fat
by Shin Ohtake creator of Max Workouts

Time may be the most important aspect in our lives. It keeps ticking away no matter what we do. It's what we live by, it's our guideline. It keeps us organized and on schedule. There's 24 hours in a day, most of us work 40 hours (or more) a week, we divide our day up into hourly increments and so it's no surprise that we judge things based on time.

If someone worked 8 hours, you automatically assume that person did more work than someone that worked 4 hours...right? The problem is, that assumption neglects a very important component...quality. Quality can't be defined by time...in fact, more often than not quality has an inverse relation to time. You're more likely to perform higher quality of work in a shorter amount of time. And the longer you work, the more likely your quality declines. And this holds true for fitness as well.

It may come as a surprise, but working out longer isn't always good for you, and it doesn't mean you're going to lose more weight either. In fact, it can stop you from losing weight all together. There's reason to believe that your body wasn't designed to exercise more than a certain amount a day and doing more can actually be more harmful.

So if you're still stuck in the mind set, that you need to workout out longer so you can burn more calories...you've been going down the wrong path and it'll only lead you to more frustrations.

Quality over quantity. Save precious time by learning to work with your body, so you can lose weight easier and more efficiently and achieve optimum health and fitness at the same time. Believe it or not, it's much easier than your think

If you look at how our evolutionary "hunter and gatherer" ancestors lived, their bodies were used efficiently as possible...since they didn't have any energy to waste. Their days most likely consisted of a lot of walking, looking and gathering for food and intermittent spurts of high level activity in pursuit of an animal during the hunt or perhaps escaping from predators. It's highly unlikely that they performed moderately to highly intense activities for long periods of time, since it would require too much energy to be depleted. And it's interesting to note, that our energy systems are divided into three distinct levels which correlate directly to duration and intensity level of activities.

Here's a simplified look at the different energy systems our body utilizes:

• Phosphate Energy System - This is what fuels our quick spurts of activity that require the largest amounts of energy in the shorted amount of time, such as sprints or lifting heavy objects. The activity requires your muscles to produce as much force as possible in the shortest amount of time. It's the quickest source of energy, but only lasts 10 - 20 seconds at a time, before it gets depleted. And It take 3 - 5 minutes before it gets replenished again.



• Glycogen Energy System - Glycogen is glucose stored in your muscles that's used for energy during activities performed at moderate to high intensity activities. The length of time glycogen can fuel your body, depends on the intensity level of the physical activity. For instance an activity like the marathon can deplete your glycogen stores in 2 hours or less. Once glycogen is depleted, your body will fatigue very quickly making it completely insufficient. Many endurance athletes describe it as "hitting the wall". Once your body completely depletes the glycogen stores, it takes about 24 hours for your body to replenish normal glycogen levels from consuming carbohydrates to converting it into glycogen for storage.



• Fat Oxidation Energy System - The fat stored in your body is utilized to fuel your body. This is done at low activity levels such as walking. Since fat source is abundant, it's your body's primary source of fuel for all of your metabolic processes as well. Unlike glycogen, where it can get replenished by consuming carbohydrates, fat doesn't get stored from eating fat. Fat accumulation occurs when there is an excess amount of energy that doesn't get utilized by your body.

The glycogen energy system is an efficient system as long as you have carbohydrate foods to replenish your body. Which leads me to the next question...how much carbohydrate foods were available to our "hunting and gathering" ancestors. We can't be sure, but we can speculate. It's safe to assume that all available carbohydrate foods during those times were unrefined carbohydrate foods. Unrefined carbohydrate foods contain much higher fiber content and much less sugar content, which is why it's so healthy - since it doesn't affect your insulin. But when you look at it from an energy (calorie) perspective, it's not a very good source of energy. In fact, the combination of fiber and low sugar content would make it difficult for them to consume enough unrefined carbohydrate foods to be able to replenish the necessary glycogen depletion, if they used too much glycogen.

So it would make sense that if you don't have enough readily available carbohydrate foods that would easily replenish your glycogen levels, you'd be better off conserving your energy throughout the day and only give the necessary extra effort when needed like hunting or escaping. Which is what our "hunter and gatherer" ancestors seemed to have done. Another possible reason that glycogen system may have been used more sparingly or perhaps only used for short durations, even if it was utilized on a frequent basis.

So if the glycogen system wasn't frequently utilized by our "hunter and gatherer" ancestors, maybe it's not designed to be used the way we're using it?

Nowadays, the glycogen energy system is the most commonly used energy system in our body when it comes to exercising. Why? Because many of us are (still) under the assumption that working out for longer periods of time means more calories burned and hence more weight loss. However, working out longer requires more energy (calories) from glycogen. In fact, the more glycogen stores you have available, the longer and harder you can work out.

Have you heard the term "carbo loading"? It became popular back in the 70's when long distance running became hugely popular. It requires you to eat lots of carbs, usually refined carbs like pasta and bread, to try and increase the amount of glycogen storage so you can have more energy to run faster and longer. Not surprisingly, at the time the health professionals (doctors, nutritionists, fitness experts) in the U.S. were claiming that daily cardiovascular exercises done at moderate intensities along with consuming 6 - 11 servings of refined carbohydrate foods like bread, grains, pasta and rice per day was the best way to prevent heart disease, weight loss and optimum health. So as a result everyone started running and doing other forms of long moderate cardiovascular exercises and hence "carbo loading" became a popular practice, especially prior to competition.

Interestingly enough, since that time, the incidence of heart disease has not decreased at all...in fact there are now direct correlations of heart disease to obesity and diabetes, along with the metabolic syndrome, which have all risen dramatically. So much for healthy recommended consumption of 6 - 11 servings of refined carbohydrate foods like bread, grains, pasta and rice per day!...although the AHA (American Heart Association) would make you believe otherwise. If you want to know more about it, there are many more eye opening facts stated in a book called "Good Calories, Bad Calories" written by Gary Taubes, which I highly recommend.

So, is there a significant link between overuse of the glycogen energy system, long duration exercises and (refined) carbohydrate foods? In my personal experience...I believe so.

Here's another take on it.

Long duration of moderately intense exercising uses glycogen almost exclusively as your energy source. And when you train this way, you're essentially making your body more efficient at utilizing and burning glucose for energy. Which basically means that you'll be able to perform the same amount of work with less energy as you get more "fit". That may be good from a performance perspective, but if your goal is to lose weight and get lean...it just means you'll have to work harder and longer to burn the same amount of fuel (calories). And let's remember that your burning off glucose...not fat.

Since these types of workouts can significantly deplete your glycogen levels, you'll need to consume carbohydrate foods in order to replenish it. Now it's best to consume unrefined carbohydrate foods, but as I mentioned above, the high fiber content and lower sugar content makes it difficult to consume enough food to replenish your depleted glycogen levels. Now being a former endurance athlete myself, I can speak from experience that there's no way that I could keep up my training by eating just fruits and veggies. You need refined carbohydrates to be able to replenish your energy and recover adequately.

Which brings me to the next important point that often gets overlooked...insulin reaction. Consuming refined carbs will spike up your insulin. No matter how much you workout or how "fit" you may be, if you eat refined carbohydrate foods, your insulin will spike and eventually can lead to insulin insensitivity. Insulin insensitivity is the number one reason for gaining weight, obesity and diabetes, and as stated earlier, there are studies now that indicate insulin plays a major role in causing heart disease as well. Now, you may be thinking that you're not affected, because you're not overweight, or perhaps you feel that you're in good shape from all the training you do. But what you're not able to see is the havoc insulin spiking causes to all of your metabolic processes. It's what you can't see or feel that's often the most dangerous to your health.

So here's what I see happening:

• Working out longer at moderate intensity causes your body to solely utilize the glycogen energy system.



• As you get more fit, you become more efficient at burning glycogen for fuel, which means you can go longer without using as much energy.



• This perpetuates a vicious cycle of having to workout longer as you get more fit and lose more weight



• And the harder and longer you workout the more you need to consume refined carbohydrate foods to replenish your depleted glycogen levels so you can keep up your "fitness" regimen.



• The more refined carbohydrate foods you take in the more your insulin spikes and eventually can lead to insulin insensitivity.



• Insulin insensitivity can cause weight gain, obesity, diabetes and even heart disease.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that you stop doing long duration exercises at moderate intensities all together...just that you decrease the frequency and change up your durations, intensities and activities more often. I think doing longer duration exercises once or twice a week is more than sufficient. This way you have plenty of time to recover and replenish your glycogen levels without having to resort to consuming refined carbohydrate foods.

I also recommend doing more short duration high intensity activities. As I've written many times before, it's the best way to burn fat and get lean. Also, shorter duration prevents your body from having to dip into the glycogen storage as much, making it much easier to replenish after working out. This will allow you to keep eating unrefined carbohydrate foods without worrying about not having enough energy to workout. Highly intense short workouts also promotes more efficient fat utilization by increasing your metabolism, so you can burn more calories throughout the day.

Lastly, instead of performing moderately intense activities, I would recommend doing more low level activities instead and switch your body's emphasis from the glycogen energy system to the fat oxidation energy system to maximize your health and weight loss capabilities. Walking is a great low level activity that utilizes your fat-oxidation energy system so you can burn more fat. The more low level activity you perform throughout the day the more fat you'll burn. As I wrote in last week's article, just by implementing walking into your daily activity and minimizing sitting by 2 hours a day, you can burn an additional 350 calories a day or a pound of fat in less than 10 days.

Here's a quick summary:

• Decrease the frequency of longer duration exercises to once or twice a week.



• If your body requires you to consume refined carbohydrate foods in order to refuel and keep up your fitness regimen, you're doing too much.



• You should be able to eat unrefined carbohydrates and have plenty of energy to perform the activities/workouts.



• It's better to workout shorter at higher intensities if you want to lose fat, get lean and achieve optimum health.



• Implement as much low level activity, such as walking, as part of your daily activity in addition to short intense workouts to really accelerate your fat burning capabilities.

Shin Ohtake is the author of the world-famous fitness program, MAX Workouts. To learn more about how you can get ultra lean and toned with shorter workouts, visit http://www.MaxWorkouts.com

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