Better Attitudes About Fat

From Bicycling Magazine

Get Lean Not Light
Simply losing weight isn't the answer. The key to peak perfomance and better overall health is learning to feed your muscles--and starve your fat.
By Matt Fitzgerald
©C.J. Burton

We're all obsessed with weight loss.

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and we spend billions each year on products and services that promise to help us shed pounds. Cyclists typically aren't overweight by average American standards, but we're nonetheless fixated on weight, wanting to make bike and body alike ever lighter in a quest for better performance. Yet the latest research shows we've all misplaced our focus, and that body composition is a much better indicator of overall health and fitness.

"Body weight tells us nothing about health," says exercise--nutrition expert John Berardi, an adjunct associate professor of exercise science at the University of Texas at Austin. "You could be 165 pounds and quite lean, or 165 pounds and quite fat. Regardless of your weight, the higher your body-fat percentage, the greater your risk of fat-related illnesses like heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers."

In terms of measuring performance potential, the bathroom scale is equally useless, says Paul Goldberg, a Colorado-based dietitian and coauthor of The Lean Look. "It doesn't distinguish muscle mass, which enhances performance, from fat mass, which hinders performance," he says. The key to going faster on a bike is improving your power-to-weight ratio, by either raising your power output or lowering your weight, or both. Power comes from muscle, so the best way to tune your body for better performance is to maintain your muscles while shedding only fat to lose weight.

Eating for pure weight loss tends to lead to the loss of both fat and muscle, as well as to undereating. "Undereating carries with it a host of problems such as deficiencies in key vitamins and minerals, reduced muscle glycogen storage, loss of muscle mass and diminished power output," says Berardi. Inadequate carbohydrate intake may reduce blood volume as a by-product of depleted glycogen stores (because glycogen is stored with water), and insufficient protein consumption limits your muscles' work capacity. "Each of these factors is a performance killer," says Berardi. Combined, you don't stand a chance. Eating for leanness is more complicated than simply restricting calories. On one hand, you need to provide muscles with the nutrition they need to function optimally. On the other, you need to deliberately starve your body's excess fat so it's broken down to provide energy for muscles and never replaced. The key is in consuming the right kinds of calories at the right times throughout the day. Here are 10 proven strategies.

1. Monitor your body-fat percentage to be sure you're eating enough calories.
The typical cyclist needs to consume 15 to 18 calories per pound of body weight per day to maintain muscle mass, but don't waste your time counting calories, advises Goldberg. "Counting calories is like tracking every pitch of a baseball game," he says. "Stepping on a body-fat scale is like jumping straight to the final score." If your body fat holds steady or decreases, you're getting enough calories. If it goes up, even though your weight may be holding steady or decreasing, it's a sign that your body is breaking down muscle because you're not consuming enough calories.

2. Consume at least 0.5 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Protein is the primary structural component of muscle. Research shows that this is the minimum level of daily consumption required to maintain muscle in endurance athletes engaged in moderate to heavy training.

3. Eat a high-carb meal before each ride
An example is to eat a bowl of oatmeal or a vegetable stir-fry with brown rice. Also, during rides lasting more than one hour, consume carbs on the bike; the simplest way is to sip a sports drink according to your thirst. "Ensuring that your muscles are well supplied with carbohydrate fuel for training will minimize the amount of muscle tissue that is broken down to provide fuel," says Goldberg.

4. Drink or eat a recovery supplement or snack within an hour of finishing a ride.
In this time frame, the body uses carbohydrate and proteins most efficiently to replenish and rebuild muscles. A study from Ontario's McMaster University found that female cyclists maintained muscle mass and performed better during a period of increased training when they consumed a carb-protein supplement immediately after workouts, rather than with breakfast.

5. Limit your consumption of extremely calorie-dense foods
These include ice cream and just about anything fried. These foods provide far more calories than your body needs to meet short-term energy needs. When you eat these, the excess calories are stored as fat.

6. Fat Consumption Goal: 25%
Keep fat consumption to no more than 30 percent of total calories, and ideally no more than 25 percent. The average American consumes 34 percent of daily calories from fat--and remember, the average American is overweight.

7. Get most of your carbohydrates from low-glycemic-index sources
These include vegetables and whole grains. Carbs from these foods are slowly absorbed into your bloodstream for longer-lasting energy; carbs from sweets and refined grains are rapidly absorbed. Choose low-GI foods at all times except during and immediately after rides, when quickly absorbed sugars will replenish glycogen stores fast.

8. Divide your daily calories over four to six eating occasions, not just two or three. "Eating frequently encourages smaller portions," says Berardi, "and eating smaller portions minimizes the number of excess calories you're likely to consume each time you eat."

9. Concentrate your calorie intake during times of greater energy needs
These times are first thing in the morning and before and after rides. Your body is least likely to store calories as fat when your muscle and/or liver glycogen reserves are low, such as when you wake up, and during and after exercise.

10. Get enough omega-3 fatty acids.
Known for boosting heart health, the omega-3 fats found in foods such as wild salmon, flaxseed and mackerel may also promote leanness. One study from Berardi's lab showed a 400--calorie-per-day increase in metabolic rate, -1 kilogram of fat lost and 1 kilogram of lean mass gained in subjects who supplemented with fish oil daily for three weeks.

Matt Fitzgerald, coauthor of The Lean Look, is a health and fitness writer in San Diego.
How Lean Should I Be?
Your optimal body-fat level depends on many factors, including gender, age, genetic makeup and your starting point. To find your ideal level, eat right and train smart, then see where you end up. Based on testing large numbers of people, this table, adapted from John Berardi's Precision Nutrition, a multi-media nutrition kit for athletes (precisionnutrition.com), can serve as a rough guideline. Most cyclists should aim to be within the athletic range, at least. Not everyone can reach the elite range.

MEN

Age: 25-30
Elite: <9%
Athletic: 9-12%
Average: 13-16%
High Fat: 17-19%
Overfat: 20%+

Age: 31-40
Elite: <11%
Athletic: 11-13%
Average: 14-17%
High fat: 18-22%
Overfat: 23%+

Age: 41-50
Elite: <12%
Athletic: 12-15%
Average: 16-20%
High fat: 21-25%
Overfat: 26%+

Age: 50+
Elite: <13%
Athletic: 13-16%
Average: 17-21%
High fat: 22-27%
Overfat: 28%+

WOMEN

Age: 20-30
Elite: <17%
Athletic: 17-20%
Average: 21-23%
High fat: 24-27%
Overfat: 28%+

Age: 31-40
Elite: 31-40
Athletic: 18-21%
Average: 22-25%
High fat: 26-29%
Overfat: 30%+

Age: 41-50
Elite: <20%
Athletic: 20-23%
Average: 24-27%
High fat: 28-31%
Overfat: 32%+

Age: 50+
Elite: <21%
Athletic: 21-24%
Average: 25-28%
High fat: 29-35%
Overfat: 36%+
Step On It
Track your progress the easy way.

Body-fat scales ($40?$150) use a technology called bioelectrical impedance, in which the device sends a weak electrical current through your body and measures the degree to which your tissues resist it. Muscle impedes the current more than fat. "This method is not quite as accurate as more-involved ways to estimate body fat," says dietitian Paul Goldberg. "But what body-fat scales lack in precision they make up for in consistency." In Bicycling's experience, these scales tend to measure high, but are useful for tracking changes--you don't get an accurate value, but you'll know if you're making progress.

Be sure to buy one with an "athlete" mode, which uses a slightly more accurate calculation for people who are already fairly lean. Goldberg recommends the Tanita Ironman line of body-fat scales, all of which are tuned for athletes. In addition to body-fat percentage, higher-end scales such as the Ironman BC-549 ($150; tanita.com) also estimate your hydration level, bone mass, basal metabolic rate and visceral fat.

The Get-Lean Meal Plan
What--and when--to eat to blast fat and boost energy.

This sample menu from sports-nutrition expert John Berardi assumes a rider weight of 165 pounds and a two-hour ride. It supplies 2,500 to 3,000 calories, depending on portion sizes, so adjust portions up or down based on differences in your weight or workout time.

Breakfast

Omelet with 2 whole eggs and 2 egg whites

1/2 cup oatmeal with 1/2 cup fruit and 1/2 cup mixed nuts

1 cup coffee or green tea

Large glass of water

Snack

Smoothie made with 1 cup low-fat or unsweetened soy milk, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1*2 cup fresh or frozen berries, 1 cup spinach, 1 tbsp. flaxseed

Lunch

Chicken salad with two 4-oz. chicken breasts, spinach and a variety of other vegetables, plus olive oil and vinegar dressing

1 piece of fruit

Large glass of water

Snack

1 slice whole-grain bread with 1 tbsp. all-natural peanut butter

1 cup baby carrots

Large glass of water

Dinner

6-oz. piece of fish such as salmon or orange roughy

1/2 cup wild rice

2 cups steamed veggies

Large glass of water

Postworkout Recovery

Drink or snack containing 50g carbohydrate and 25g protein

2 cups low-fat chocolate milk

Omega-3s

Supplement your diet with 3,000mg of fish oil daily with meals, says Berardi.

Price and Wine Enjoyment

I heard a story on NPR the other day about how people get better results from taking expensive pills — even when the "expensive pill" is a placebo with no active medical ingredients. It’s amazing what our minds will do when we anticipate that something is better.

The same results were discovered from research done on the correlation between enjoyment of wine and the price of the wine. The majority of the time, when people drank what they thought was a more expensive wine; they enjoyed it better than the less expensive wine. A wine that retailed for $90 was sampled by different groups of people. When they were told the true price, they loved it. When other people were told that the wine was just a $10 wine, they didn’t rate it as highly.

What’s even scarier to me is what was going on inside the test subjects’ brains. While the subjects tasted and evaluated the wines, their brains were scanned using an MRI, focusing on the activity of a brain region that is involved in our experience of pleasure. The researchers concluded that, "prices, by themselves, affect activity in an area of the brain that is thought to encode the experienced pleasantness of an experience”!

So much for trying to be objective about wine.

I’ve been facing a choice lately as my budget gets stretched with rising gas and food prices. Do I buy cheaper wine or quality wine less often? This study makes me think that perhaps I just need to learn more about what wines I like and find the great bargains out there. If I can learn to ignore the price tag and concentrate just on the wine itself, I may be able to drink wine with every dinner meal after all.

I wonder if that’s possible given the following statement from one of the researchers:

"If you think about it, the brain should only be influenced by the core components of the wine — its chemical composition. It should not be influenced by something like price," Shiv said. "But in the study we found a functional change in activity in different areas of the brain despite the same chemicals being experienced."

Maybe I need to have my wife buy all the wine and label each bottle with a price tag that says $100!

There's a Chettah in my Bottle

Certain parts of the world are known for a particular grape. Pinotage is that grape for South Africa. I’d bet that not many people consider Pinotage their favorite grape, but I found my first sample of a wine made from this grape interesting.

Pinotage is a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut created in 1925. The hope was to create a grape with the great flavor of Pinot Noir and the hearty growing strengths of Cinsaut. In South Africa, Cinsaut was called “Hermitage” which explains how the grape is called Pinotage and not Pinotaut.

From what I’ve read about wines made from the grape, they can range from “light and fruity and best consumed young to heavy and tannic examples that needed years to reach maturity.” Flavors of pepper, black fruits, spiciness and acetone are used to describe these wines. It appears that these wines can have an unattractive earthiness. One site said that Pinotage has “has enjoyed great success in a short amount of time but may have had its 15 minutes of fame.”

The wine I tried was a Sebeka Syrah-Pinotage blend. The wine is 60% Shiraz, 40% Pinotage. It reminded me of a cross between a Syrah and a Zinfandel with nice fruit (but not sweet) a little jammy and some pepper flavor. At times the wine seemed to turn a little harsh (maybe the earthiness of the pinotage) on the back of my tongue as I swallowed it. It was almost the same experience as drinking an earthy French wine, but not quite as pleasant.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy this wine, but for the $5 I was able to buy it for, it was a nice wine. I found it interesting that the same wine was $10 at another store in town. It probably would not have picked it up for that price. The chettah on the label normally would put me off as a little too much marketing effort to sell a wine that can’t stand up on its own merits. Jerry Hall who used to have a wine blog called Wine Waves reviewed a wine from Sebeka and posted a great picture of the over for the Sebeka brand (though the yellow cheetah spotted cork is cool!) Gallo Wineries owns the Sebeka label, but the grapes are grown in South Africa and made into wine there. There is even a cheetah endangered species fund associated with the wine, but I don't know how much of this is marketing and much it really helps the animals.

I bought a bottle of 100% pinotage to get a better taste of what the varietal is like. But I think I can call Pinotage my grape # 57 in my Century quest.

Tasting Notes:

Sebeka Syrah Pinotage "Cape Blend" (13.5% alcohol)

Color: Dark cranberry

Aroma: Cherry, zinfandel and syrah like

Flavor: Cherry, like a jammy syrah with a hint of black pepper

Finish: Mild tannins but an earthy bite, unpleasant at times

This wine went really well with garlic, pepper spiced Tri-Tip.

You Only Live Twice

"Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone
in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning.
But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives
everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it.
Looks at the texture and detail."
Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, page 48

I have not been posting about wine for almost three months now. There are several "reasons" but the biggest one has been lack of funds. I was buying wine and blogging about them at a rate beyond what my budget was able to handle. I decided to stop blogging to decrease the temptation to buy so much wine.

Then I came across Natalie Goldberg's quote, the one at the top of this page. If I really want to cut back on my spending but still enjoy wine, what better way than to drink each bottle twice!?! I still drink wine, I still want to learn more, I still want to share in this cool blogging world.

I may have ruined my credibility as a blogger by abandoning my blog without a warning, but I'm back and I will keep posting. I can't wait to read everyone else's blogs like I had been doing so regularly. What better way to experience wine than by sharing it with others.

Sorry for the absence...hope to read from you soon!

Wine Blogging Wednesday: French Cab Franc

This month's host for Wine Blogging Wednesday is Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV and the topic is French Cabernet Franc. I wasn't able to find a wine that was from a majority of this grape but I did find a nice wine. First, a little information about the grape. (Click on the Wine Blogging Wednesday logo to learn more about this monthly blogging event.)

Cabernet Franc (Cab Franc) is one of the six red grapes permitted to be grown in the Boredeaux. Depending on how it's grown, Cab Franc can be both fruitier or more "vegetative" than Cabernet Sauvignon, although lighter in color and tannins. Wines made from 100% Cab Franc tend to have a spicy aroma and plums. The grape is usually blended with either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot instead of as a stand-alone wine. It "contributes finesse and a peppery perfume to blends with more robust grapes."

The wine I tried was from the Fronsac region on the "Right bank" of Bordeaux. The Fronsac is located where the Isle River flows into the large Dordogne River. This creates a microclimate that reduces night frosts in spring and cools the summer's heat. The steep slopes in Fronsac help the Bordeaux grape varieties grown here create powerful and complex wines. The soils are clay mixed with limestone.

Fronsac wines are described as being "masculine" and full-bodied. Grapes were grown in this are before the more famous Saint-Emilion just down the river. Merlot grows better here than Cabernet Sauvignon, so like other Right-bank areas, Fronsac is know for it's Merlot blends. Cab Franc is used to add spiciness and enhance the tannins.

The Bordeaux blend I tried for this WBW is from Chateau Villars, a two hundred year old winery in Fronsac. For the past two decades, the owners of Ch. Villars have been modernizing their vineyards and wine making practices. One example of this is that grapes are picked at maximum ripeness, causing the harvest to spread over several weeks. I learned from the book Nobel Rot (the Wine Book Club selection for April) that traditionally grapes were picked to insure maximum harvest before rains came. By waiting for maximum-ripeness, wines with fuller, fruitier flavors are produced.

The Ch. Villars wine I had was 75% Merlot, 18% Cab Franc and 8% Cab Sauvignon. It was 100% barrel-aged for a year in oak barrels, a third of which were brand new. This was a really nice Merlot, though it was different due to the amount of oak used. I had never been able to detect oak in a red wine before this wine, but it was definetly present in the Ch. Villars (Gary would make a comment about the "Oak Monster" I'm sure!) When I first smelled the wine, I could detect cherry and a fresh bread aroma. I couldn't name the fruit I tasted but there without being "fruit forward."

The wine has a medium mouth feel and really nice tannins that don't overpower the fruit or my toungue. Then just before I was about to swallow I could detect the oak. It wasn't excessive, but contributed to make the wine seem fuller. Some may not like it, though. The finish left a pleasant sour cherry taste and lasting tannins. This wine would be really good with food.

Its interesting how the oak effect the middle of my tongue more than any other area of my mouth. The oak also came back again in the finish. I've had other Merlots before, but I'm not sure what part the Cab Franc contributed to this wine to make it different. The oak was more detectable for me. I'll have to read other WBW posts today and try to find some of those wines to get a better feel for what Cab Franc offers. It would be cool to taste a 100% Cab Franc, a 100% Merlot, and then my Ch. Villars blend to see if I could then pick out the different varietals in the blend. I would definitely buy this wine again. The winery website said the wine will be best between 2012 to 2025. It would be nice to try it then to see how the wine deveolops.

Tasting Notes:

2005 Château Villars Fronsac ($19.99)

Color:  Dark purple

Aroma:  Cherry and bread (wonderful Merlot nose)

Taste:  Fruit and oak, medium mouth feel

Finish:  Sour cherry, medium tannins and oak