Does eating broccoli really burn more calories than it actually contains?

Does eating broccoli really burn more calories than it actually contains?

The staple vegetable of many bodybuilders and fitness models.
It has long been considered to be the most prominent of what is known as:
"Thermogenic Foods"

Thermic Effect of Food / Thermogenic Effect of Food

Definition:

"The energy expenditure brought on as a direct cause of the digestion, absorption and transportation of nutrients" (Goljan, 2013). 

The apparent criteria for a thermogenic or 'negative calorie' food is one that contains a low calorie count while simultaneously containing a high fibre count. A list of these so called fruits and vegetables can be seen below:

The Theory:

In one piece / spear of broccoli there is, on average, 11 calories. The theory of the thermogenic effect of food dictates that throughout the digestion, absorption and transportation of nutrients from that one piece of broccoli, the body actually burns more than the original 11 calories consumed.

"Great! So if i eat nothing but broccoli I will lose copious amounts of weight!"

Wrong!!!

This theory and subsequent popular assumption is wrong on two parts:

Part A: The theory is flawed

Part B: The Calorie Myth

Part A: Why the theory is flawed.

Different foods do use varying degrees of energy within the digestion-absorption-transportation process: 

Carbohydrates: 5-15%

Fats: 5-15%

Proteins: 20-35%

The body obtains the above mentioned percentages from the energy obtained from the digestion process (Granata, Brandon, 2002). So if a piece of meat contains 100 calories the body will use 20-35 calories to digest, absorb and transport the nutrients from that piece of meat......on average of course.

No one is denying that certain foods use a varying amount of calories during this process, this has been proved in various studies. But not a single study has ever proved that the processing of certain foods like broccoli or celery. None! Zilch! Nada!

Unfortunately it's all lies, based on unfounded theories and evidence!

In fact, those who fall into the category of overweight or obese have actually been found to burn an even lower percentage of consumed calories during the day compared to a lean individual. (De Jonge, Bary, 1997, Nelson, Weinsier et al. 1992). 

Part B: The Calorie Myth

Part B will evolve into a 4 part series of blogs featuring over the next 4 Sundays. 

We've already shown that no evidence to support TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) exists. But let's for one minute assume that the theory played out and you did in fact burn more calories than you consumed. This is based on the Calories in Vs. Calories out way of thinking, in that, if you require 2000 calories to maintain your bodyweight and only eat 1800 in a day, you will lose 200 calories and subsequently lose weight. 

Wrong! And on many levels!

• A calorie is defined as a unit of energy that is required to contribute to a reaction within the body. A certain amount of calories are required for daily functioning and that is it! No mention of a certain amount of grams of calories so why would a reduction in the weight or number of calories consumed have a direct impact on the weight of an individual. It all depends on everything that comes along with the calorie. To put it another way some houses are heated using home heating oil, another house is heated using gas. They both heat our homes but weight totally different amounts, but, that doesn't effect how warm our house is, does it!
• Different foods cause different hormonal reactions within the body. These different hormonal reactions cause an array of different processes to occur and to make matters more confusing, each process effects each person differently based on body fat%, lean mass%, vascular health, nerve health, gut health, skin health and organ health. The hormonal changes can cause weight gain in one person and weight loss in another. This can again be influenced by stress, exercise and disease! In essence no one person is the same and any diet or nutritional plan should be individualized.

An excellent source on this very topic and a contributor to my own personal research is a book called: 

"The Calorie Myth" by Jonathan Bailor." Below is a link to a review of his book through amazon! But remember to check out the 4 part series starting on Sunday night on my blog called "Eat Less, Lose Less".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Calorie-Myth-Exercise-Weight-Better/dp/0062267337/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395782438&sr=1-1&keywords=the+calorie+myth

Thanks,

Ethan

Monday Blues: Pet Peeves At The Gym

There are no words or actions strong enough to express my annoyance at how quickly our weekend has disappeared and the demands of our overseers (employers) and financial contracts come calling. Very quickly we our thrown back into the joy that is: phonecalls, paperwork, clients, manual labor, cleaning and selling. 

The result is a depressed, bitter, hypersensitive employee, ready to bite the head off the first person who is brave enough to talk to us. So as i gather my clothes, trainers, chalk and supplements to head off the gym I cant help but think of the awfully annoying situations we all face when we head to the gym. So here are my top 5:

1. A cluttered gym floor: full of un-racked weight plates, dumbbells, water bottles, towels, shakers, shoes, chalk, belts, phones, supplements, energy bar wrappers, cleaning tissues and spillages.

We all see those messy people who leave the gym looking like a crash site. People we must remember that when you go into a gym, it is NOT YOUR GYM. You are paying for the privilege to use someone elses gym. Could you imagine if someone came to your house to workout and left your home gym looking like the above picture? You would freak out! So as a guide i want you all to follow the list below, ensuring you respect each and every gym member and gym provider:

• Strip the bar of weights when you're done with it.
• Put the dumbbells back on the rack when your finished with them.
• When you've drank your water and finished your energy bar, put the rubbish in the bin. 
• If you're not finished your drink, place it neatly out of the way, NOT in the middle of the gym floor.
• If you spill anything or notice you've left a rather large sweat patch, clean it up! Use the tissue and cleaning liquid provided!
• The same goes for any spillages of supplements or chalk. If not cleaned up soon, these can stain and small!
• Then put the tissue you've used, into the bin! Do not just throw it anywhere.
• If training barefoot or in sock, leave your trainers neatly to the side, away from everyone else. 
• The same goes for belts, straps and chains.
• And keep your phone in your pocket (better yet, keep it in your locker). Too many phones get broken in the gym because they've been left in stupid places.

2. Groups/Lazyness/Phone users:

Guys, remember why we all go to the gym.......To work out! Exercise! Become healthy! There is nothing wrong with chatting for a minute or two with your friends or colleagues at the gym but please don't do it at the expense or other people's workout, or your own. Gyms can become very busy, very quickly and people often have to squeeze the gym into a very busy time schedule so please, when you're done with a machine, move quickly out of the way or move onto your next exercise. If you want to socialize, go to Starbucks. Again, the same goes to those who for example are bench pressing, finish a set of 12 reps then lay down on the bench for half an hour before they move onto the next one! Keep pushing yourself! Power lifters or those of disciplined strength building programs are the minority who should be resting for longer periods of time, so, when you are done with a set, time yourself until the next, or, get some help from a trainer to properly design a program. And if you're excessively using your phone instead of working out, leave it in the locker!

3. People who make fun of those who are fat/overweight/obese/heavy (whatever the current PC term is) who are clearly at the gym because they are trying to lose that weight!

Why! Why! Why! Why! Why! Anyone who I ever see doing this is promptly asked to leave! Bullying of any sort is wrong and I have no respect at all for those who I catch doing it. People who are fat (and yes i will use the word fat) are individuals are image and body conscious. They have been driven by society to feel that they have to look like a fitness model for people to pay attention to them. Often they are lonely, scared and quiet BUT more often than not they are more genuine and friendly than the ripped-to-shreds guy or sexy hourglass figure girl next to you. You who makes fun of fat people, do not know their story, you do not know how or why that person is overweight (you are maybe even the reason why) and you certainly are in no place to make fun of them for trying to live a healthier lifestyle. They have taken the all important step towards preventing the many chronic illnesses that they are at risk to: lowering their cholesterol, lowering their blood pressure, lowering their blood sugars and lowering their waistline measurements. In fact to put it plainly if you make fun of someone going to the gym because they are fat, your are effectively saying you do not want them to be healthy and you would rather they developed a chronic disease like diabetes, heart disease or cancer. Doesn't sound too nice at all when you put it like that. Anyone who has felt victimized because of bullying keep an eye out for a future blog on the topic. But for now, I have provided a couple of links below for organisations you can contact for help and support:

http://www.stopbullying.gov/
http://www.nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/
http://www.samaritans.org/

4. Posers

Now I can sympathize with pulling a few poses in the mirror once or twice a workout. It's nice to see that pump have an almighty effect on your muscle and its good to track your progress. But, please don't make a habit of it. We as gym users do not want to tred on eggshells walking in and around all your flamboyant poses in front of the dumbbell rack. We just want to lift our weights and get on with our workout, which is what you should be doing too! If you want to spend half an hour just posing, do it at home!

5. Bro-science guy/girl

These are the guys/girls that tell us "you have to drink your protein shake within 5 minutes after your workout or it doesn't have any effect" or, "lift light weights for 50 repetition sets for 5 sets and that will tone you up and help you lose weight". There are a multitude of these expressions collectively known as Bro-Science or simply just: "rubbish." In case anyone is wondering, those two statements above are FALSE. It is comments like these that drive fitness professionals like myself mad because we have to spend 15 minutes of every one hour slot explaining to clients, that what they have been told during the week by their gym buddies is wrong and then we explain why its wrong and then we explain the correct answer. This useless information usually comes from people who have heard or read something through the grapevine who spin it off as the gospel truth, which it then falls into a game of gym chinese whispers and finally rests on another poor soul who adapts it 100% to his lifestyle. If you hear something that doesn't quite sound right, then read around the topic first. Or ask a trainer or nutritionist. Don't immediately tell everyone its the new secret to fat loss or muscle building! That being said, below is a link to a very funny guy called Dom, who is obviously joking around in his videos, but the stuff he comes off with are the type of things people preach as Gods divine word. Have a watch to see what i mean:

As I finish this blog I've very quickly realized that there are many other pet peeves, so there may well be another similar blog in the future. But for now, comment your pet peeves below, let me know what you hate/dislike at the gym!

Ethan

All about me

So you've read on the amazing posts to come from my welcome post - if not, why not? Just kidding, but to find out what is to come after this slight deter, give the welcome post a good read.

Regardless you're probably wondering the following:

1. Who on earth is this guy?
2. Why should I listen to him?

To answer these questions and the many more probably rattling round in those heads of yours, it give you a brief history of who Ethan Lowry is.

Some details first:

• Full name: Ethan Stewart Lowry
• What age am I: 20
• Where do I live: Portglenone,  Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
• What school did I go to: Ballymena Academy
• What University (college for you americans) did I go to: University of Ulster, Jordanstown Campus, Bsc Hons Physiotherapy
• What religion am I: Christian

So where does my story begin?

To keep it applicable to my job and this blog, it spare you the details of my first 10/11 years of my life - Thank goodness you all say! Don't worry its not going to be a day to day diary of my life. Events like how I was so distraught that my primary school crush ended up falling for my best friend, is in the past. You'll be happy to know this post isn't going to be about such trivial matters.

I start at the first most influential moment of my childhood, when I had just started secondary school, my beloved Ballymena Academy.  I was so engrossed in being involved in such a sport driven school, twice a week or more we ran the rugby pitches practising our plays for the game on Saturday, once a week we had p.e. and every Wednesday we had games which involved a myriad of sports and activities. So I was definitely an active child, encouraged by my sport driven father and a wildly competitive family, you can soon see how the seeds where planted when it comes to sport and exercise. But something strange began happening a couple of months in at my first year in school. I was drinking lots!  Just to clarify, I was not drinking alcohol, I did not suffer from alcohol abuse at age 11. I just couldn't get enough water, I would drink and drink and drink and it would never be satisfied. I was leaving class, saying I was going to the toilet and secretly running to the nearest water fountain. A week went by  and I was still feeling like this and then one night, BAM, I wet the bed. Yep that's right, wet the bed. At this point I was freaking out, so I told the parents the symptoms I had been experiencing and so the next day they took me down to the Doctors to get checked out. The doctor asked a few question, done some blood work and that was it, he turned round and said "DIABETES." I was confused, I'd never eaten a lot sweets, sugar or bad foods, we were a relatively healthy family. I was eventually diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes melitus. But my diabetes is for another blog.

Testing blood sugars...
One of the many annoying aspects of diabetes

I progressed through school being involved in various sports but mainly rugby and eventually football. My rugby career came to an abrupt end in my GCSE year when i had a severe break in my collar bone with associated shoulder problems. It healed in approximately a year but the rest of the teams had progressed so much i decided to go for the football team. At the same time I had become more involved in the gym. My best friend and subsequent gym partner became "disciplined" in our own eyes, training 4/5 days a week. And we made pretty good progress, with quite a lot of muscle mass and still staying really lean. But at this stage we just followed the standard  "t-shirt muscles" workout - you know, biceps, chest and abs. The very idea of training legs or back never even crossed our mind. We just wanted to look good - forgetting that other people seen a lot more than what we seen face on in the mirror.

For myself this led to over-pronated shoulders due to tight pectoralis major and minor and weak (never used) back muscles. My core strength was terrible from never squatting and my legs were miserably thin. It wasn't until i went to Uni that i realised how this had affected my posture.


On obtaining the grades i needed to get into Uni i headed off in Autumn 2011 to University of Ulster, Jordanstown Campus, Belfast, to do my dream course of Physiotherapy.

 When i got to Uni everyone wants to make a good impression so I decided heck I'm gonna take my training to a new level, I want to look good - even though from the neck up there wasn't much of a chance. Heck I was happily in a relationship so i wasn't even on the pull. But its a guy thing, what guy doesn't want to look bigger and stronger in front of other guys? Who doesn't want the bulging arms that stretch the probably too tight hollister t-shirt and the rippling abs that you "accidentally" show off when you take off your hoody and the tee just happens to slide up your torso.

But low and behold i walked into one of my first practical class for physiotherapy and the lecturer points to me and says; "Can you come to the front and take off your t-shirt and strip down to your shorts." I didn't mind, I thought I was in pretty good shape and I was pretty lean, but, the lecturer was quick to point out all the parts of my body effected by only training the t-shirt muscles when i was at school. He confirmed my pronated shoulder, weak back muscles - signified by muscle atrophy (wasting) - my weak posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings and calves.) The weak posterior chain led to a lordotic curve in my lumbar (lower) spine . This caused a stretching of my abs and even though i had trained them frequently, the stretch caused them to still be relatively weak. More significantly it also caused a huge "sticky-out-butt," which was very noticeable.

Basically I looked like this!

From this new information I quickly changed around my gym routine. I started squatting loads and you know what, I hated it!! I hated the feeling of being weak at the gym. I mean, when I was training chest i could dumbbell press 35-40kg each arm at 18! I could barely squat with 60kg and i was a broken man for the next few days with doms. But, then i started to see progress. I saw my lordotic curve begin to correct itself and i put on about half a stone of mostly muscle in about 6-8 weeks of squatting like this.

So i progressed through my first year at Uni training away! By the time summer came round I had been thinking more and more about entering into the fitness industry. I saw the way physiotherapist and personal trainers often liaised with each other and it finally clicked, why can't I do both. So, I talked to a number of personal trainers and others in the industry and with the financial assistance from my aunt, I enrolled onto my first Level 2 Fitness Instructor course. I was hooked immediately, I was dying to take it to the next level and couldn't wait to enroll onto a Level 3 Personal Trainer course. But i had a dilemma, I was still at University. I couldn't just take 6 weeks off, especially on a course that involves regular placements. I thought I couldn't progress, but then I found out that the same company offered the level 3 qualification part-time. So, I enrolled. At the same time i had taken various different courses in; kettlebells, spin, boxercise, circuits and kinesiotape therapy.

I began reading more and more around the science of training and nutrition. I wanted to be an expert in the field. I knew I needed to take the brave step and start to attract clients for the first time. Through talking to friends and family I began to devise my own set of kettlebell classes. These ran over a period of 6 weeks right through second year at Uni. The summer months were on me again and i decided to offer a an early morning bootcamp over two months. It was during this time I realised the benefits of early morning rises. Difficult at first, I quickly realised that i had much more energy throughout the day and more of the day to enjoy. Through both the classes and the bootcamp, I knew that i loved what i was doing and I wanted to do it more, but, third year of Uni was coming. Finals, dissertations all loomed. But i knew i had to do something to better my knowledge within the industry. I had been wanting to improve my knowledge of nutrition and because of my ties with Uni it had to be part-time. I decided upon enrolling on an Advanced Diploma in Clinical Nutrition. Which as of yesterday i completed with a distinction an I am already putting it to good use with helping clients control their health and weight through simple and effective programs.

So what is next for me in my life. I was hooked on the knowledge i learnt on my diploma and once my degree finishes this year in April i plan to enroll with the International Society of Sports Nutritionists whilst also taking on an Advanced Diploma through the ISSN as well.

I also am currently planning to apply for a Masters program at the University of Ulster in Sports and Exercise Nutrition.

Hopefully I haven't bored you all senseless with this post but I felt it was important to give you guys an insight as to how i entered and started off my journey into the industry

Where can you find me at:

• Facebook: Ethan Lowry Health & Fitness
• Instagram: @ethanlowry_pt
• Blogger: Ethan Lowry Health and Fitness
• Pinterest: SolidRock Gym
• Twitter: @EthanLowryPT

Many Thanks,

Ethan