Nutrition Frenzy

Personal trainer says even a 10-minute workout gets you closer to fitness goals

NUTRITION

Dr. Melina Jampolis, a San Francisco, California, physician nutrition specialist, is the diet and fitness expert for CNNhealth.com. She focuses exclusively on nutrition for weight loss and disease prevention and treatment.

1. Go for very specific goals.

Make an actual list. Don’t be vague. Instead if “looking better,” write down specifics, such as being able to run around with kids at the park or not wearing a baggy T-shirt to the beach. It’s an internal motivator.

2. Volunteer.

Good karma could be good fitness. Volunteer activities such as coaching a youth soccer game, walking shelter dogs or cleaning up a beach encourages movement and exercise, Jampolis said. When it comes to burning calories, think outside the gym.

“Look for active volunteer opportunities with any form of movement,” she said.

Cheryl Forberg is a behind-the-scenes nutritionist for NBC’s show, “The Biggest Loser.” She is a registered dietitian and chef. She has a weekly blog and is the author of the book “Positively Ageless.”

1. Make over your kitchen.

Get rid of foods that have lower nutritional values, such as white sugar, bread and pasta. If junk food isn’t in your kitchen, you can’t be tempted, Forberg said.

2. Healthy snacking helps.

Having a snack sustains healthy blood sugar levels and energy. This way you don’t feel famished and end up overeating. She recommends a piece of fruit with a protein or healthy fat — perhaps a few nuts with an apple, a cheese stick or a carton of yogurt for a snack.

“Combining protein and carbohydrates keeps you full longer and sustains blood sugar longer and keeps your energy levels,” she said.

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Here’s a little trick for controlling your appetite. And, interestingly, it has nothing to do with what you eat. It’s about how you exercise.

Seems that the right combo of physical activity may have the power to make you eat less. The magic formula? Doing both cardio and strength training. Doing just one or the other doesn’t really curb your calorie intake as much, if at all.

Pump It Up, Run It Off . . . and Eat Less
When men in one small study combined aerobic exercise with weight training for 16 weeks, they ate significantly fewer calories compared with the men who did either aerobics or weight training alone or who did no exercise at all. The researchers suspect that the combo of cardio and strength exercises had the most favorable effect on blood levels of fats, glucose, amino acids, and satiety hormones — producing a powerful combination of hunger-controlling physiological changes.

Keep At It
We all know that eating fewer calories than we burn is a major key to long-term weight loss. Besides balancing your physical activities, try these other helpful tips for turning the dial down on hunger:

Understand why you eat.

Crank up your fat-burning furnace.

Crank up your fat-burning furnace. Instead, make a permanent life change.

Controlling the Chemistry of Emotional Eating

Learning the science behind cravings is the first step toward controlling them

Our ancestors ate to survive. They ate because they were hungry, or maybe to celebrate a victory over a warring tribe. Us? We eat because we’re angry, bored, stressed, frustrated, depressed, watching a movie, too busy, not busy enough, getting together with friends, or ticked off because the Lions lost.

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