Your body’s health and appearance is dependent on many lifestyle habits and behaviors especially as you age.  With regard to diet and exercise, food intake and calorie burn through physical activity inevitably becomes a compensation-Will Power challenge.  Mind over body then becomes much more of a will power issue not to consume the “wrong types and quantities” of foods after an exercise, or activity event.  Compensation weight gain effect simply means if your body burns calories it will also want to replace them by telling the hunger center in the brain to eat more.  Your brain begins to beg you to stop the screaming fat cells from causing you agony and to satisfy them.  Scary little guys these fat cell monsters!

    I’ve known for some time that exercise alone would not be the sole factor in my weight loss and weight management program.  When I was working on my Exercise Science undergraduate degree, one thing I did learn is in order to maintain healthy body weight equilibrium especially as we age, requires a “customized” multidisciplinary fit-healthy life program approach.

    This program must consist of exercise-activity, nutrition and healthy living habits to manage weight effectively.  This multi-discipline approach is necessary for successful weight loss and body weight regulation at any age.

    My take on exercise equipment products sold on TV; as I’ve stated in previous articles…  They won’t provide you a significant or lifelong weight loss result without fit-healthy living habits.  If you’re serious about losing weight, don’t waste your money on exercise TV product gimmicks.  Instead, consider buying a gym membership and apply aerobic activity using various types of aerobic equipment to accomplish body weight goals. 

    For those of you without much experience in a gym, look to purchase a few 1:1 fitness trainer sessions for weight loss programming and/or need motivation, etc.  Look for local fitness center promotion specials that run near end of year and during early spring.  Also, learn to become smart in nutrition choices by doing your own nutritious food research.  For example, use the Internet and research under fit/healthy” weight loss tips and recommendations.  Also consider visiting your local book store/library, or take a community college wellness, nutrition/health fitness course, etc.  Consider purchasing fitness training books and videos geared around natural weight loss activities using a bicycle, walking, swimming, treadmill, etc., if the gym is not for you.  Or if dollars are tight, simply start a daily walking program.

    When I mention TV exercise gimmicks they are exercise equipment that are non aerobic in nature and specifically work on body toning, not fat burning!  For example, abs, hip-buttocks-chin specific exercise equipment. 

     Also I know many of you know my favorite aerobic activity is walking.  Walking in my opinion is the best cardiovascular, fat burning, low stress and low impact exercise available to all that can walk!  This is one of the best and least stressful aerobic fat burning activities at little to know cost on the pocket book.  It is my experience that walking causes the least amount of hunger pain if it is done with low intensity (“not” speed walking).  This is because the body will shift to greater fat burning as a fuel source.  And the most effective fat burning occurs during low intensity aerobic exercise, i.e., walking!  How cool is that!  

    I walk almost every day, own some fitness equipment and have a fitness center membership.  I’ve found fitness activity variety keeps boredom at bay by breaking up the daily routine.  This helps immensely with my daily motivation to maintain a fit-healthy lifestyle and manage weight.

    Walking doesn’t cost anything but time and the cost of good footwear.   Gym memberships are also nice because the sky is the limit on aerobic equipment choices.  If interested in fitness memberships look for one that has a swimming pool within the facility.   I find swimming pools useful for a full body workout and is also not stressful on the joints.  Swimming provides a good variety between walking, exercising with weights and other aerobic conditioning variations.  Plus, I find swimming very relaxing while working to tone other muscles throughout my body.

     Always keep in mind the compensation weight gain effect.  If you exercise, regardless of activity you’ll always feel hungry approximately 1 hour after activity.  This is because most work done in the gym tends to become quick pace through daily conditioning.  Think about it.  You want to finish and get to the home relaxation phase of your day, so you push your body to get out of the gym.  In essence you begin to exercise at a greater intensity rate which more closely resembles an anaerobic high intensity training activity that will burn greater quantities of quick fuel sources; cretin phosphate, glucose-glycogen making you feel hungrier faster.  However, if your routine is mostly aerobic you’ll burn more body fat and more of it at lower aerobic intensity rates.  My experience is, if you burn fat at lower intensity training, you don’t get the extreme hunger factor working against you.

    In knowing that daily aerobic conditioning will naturally spur higher work training intensities [especially as you become better conditioned], you can be prepared for hunger pains if you begin pushing yourself at higher intensity levels. 

    In order to gage the best fat burning intensity and reduce severe hunger pains… Don’t train at intensities that make you out of breath, or make it hard to carry on a conversation.  Also if you’re THR (Target Heart Rate) zone peaks into a high intensity cardiovascular training zone for your age you are not maximizing your body’s fat burning potential.  Ask your fitness trainer about THR, or simply research this term on the Internet to best understand how to train and burn more fat in the THR fat burning zone. 

    To easily understand how to perceive THR fat burning zone; it is just enough intensity of walking, riding a bike, or jogging where you can comfortably talk without being out of breath.  But not so easy, you can’t feel an exercise exertion.  THR burning zone is somewhere in-between these two workout intensities for the best fat burn effect.

    I do have a solution to help you out in the hunger department as you will want to be adequately armed before the hunger pains hit regardless of your fat burning training intensity.  I’ve found, especially after the work out “the calorie burn compensation weight gain effect to replace the spent calories does impact us all at different hunger pain intensities.  The tip here is to fool the brain with low calorie nutritious fillers that will curve appetite.  Supplemental fillers will also strengthen will power to avoid pounding down excess calories to satisfy the screaming fat cells while at the dinner table. 

    Whether the aerobic exercise is walking, biking, swimming, repetitive low resistance circuit training, etc., I know I’ll always be hungry after 90 minutes of exercise because my body is conditioned to work out more intensely during activity.  So if you can’t get your hands on fruit or vegetables, you can get water down your gullet.  Although water won’t fully satisfy the fat cell compensation screaming in your mind, a pint of water will stop this hunger feeling rather fast as the bloated stomach technique will temporarily fool the brain.

    Besides, water is good for you… Let’s not forget this.  I know it’s boring.  I know you’d prefer an electrolyte drink.  Don’t feed your hydration demands on these alone [drink more water instead].  Electrolyte drinks have enough calories in many of them to compensate back to your body what you just burnt [keep this in mind].  However, electrolyte drinks are great for high intensity aerobic-training endurance events where sodium and potassium levels in the blood can be reduced significantly and require replacement.  During high intensity cardiovascular activities fat burning is not the fitness goal.

    One thing I’m sure many of you may not know.  Many times when your brain tells you it’s hungry, it’s not, and your body is really thirsty.  So give the water gulping session serious consideration frequently while you work out.  This will help.  This water gut blot sensation will provide a feeling of fullness relieving hunger sensations while rehydrating the body.

    However, beware; water is easily absorbed through the stomach and intestinal lining.  So this is a temporary fill to fool your mind’s hunger pains and rehydrate the body.  It’s not the cure all solution to defeat the calorie compensation effect that will ultimately result once the body is adequately worked and watered down.  Water in the stomach to fool your brain is like putting water in a strainer that’s lined with cheese cloth.  In other words, you don’t have much time before your brain tells you you’re hungry once the water quickly absorbs into the body.   You have approximately 10-15minutes max before your fat cells say “FEED ME, once the body is adequately hydrated!”  If you give in to the jelly donut, or pepperoni pizza, compensation “excess calorie effect wins over will power and body weight discipline.”

    Will you have the discipline and will power to fight off gorging yourself with the wrong foods while dealing with the compensation effect between exercising the body through aerobic conditioning?  This leads to another trick up my sleeve I’ve used, just in case I get a huge hunger surge in between meals.  I highly recommend you find a nutritious food bar, or shake that’s high in protein and fiber to hold you over between meals.  This is like eating many mini-meals between the main meals.  You’ll find your body won’t be screaming from shear hunger, while reducing total daily calories and body weight.  There are many products to choose from… But you’ll want the fiber and protein filler bars because these low calorie high nutrient combinations will fool your brain for longer periods of time.  Good quality food bars, fruits and veggies work great after workouts and curving hunger in between meals.

    I’ve also found that by taking a water bottle with me filled with a couple scoops of fiber source drinks is a good emergency fix to satisfy a hunger attack when my compensation metabolism tells me I’m starving.  The beauty with this fix, you can carry the fiber powder around in a dry bottle forever until you add water.  When you have a hunger attack and you can’t wait to make that family dinner, fill the bottle with water, shake and chug that fiber drink.  Yummy!  “Well yummy is debatable, I did that for effect.”

    Really, there are good fiber/protein drinks out there in all flavors.  Look for fiber drinks that pack at least 3-5grams per serving.  Once you use your emergency compensation stomach fill solution to satisfy brain hunger, be sure to reload the bottle prior to the next fitness training session.  It is very frustrating to look in your gym bag, or back pack to find an empty fiber, or protein powder bottle.  More the reason to stock an arsenal of various powder drinks in ready premix bottles and power bars at the ready.  I like to use old water bottles instead of tossing them after I drink the water.   I take 3-4 of them, load two with electrolyte and 2 with fiber-protein powders where they stay in dry storage (in the capped bottle)  until I need them.  I usually keep them in my car, or gym bag.  Just add water, shake and drink.

    Finding what works for you and sticking to it is a big part of fitness and weight-diet management success. By applying the techniques in which I speak will allow you proper preplanning prior to aerobic fitness training and compensation weight management success.

Author:  Marc T. Woodard, MBA, BS Exercise Science, USA Medical Services Officer, CPT, RET.  2009 Copyright, All rights reserved.  Mirror Athlete Enterprises Publishing @: www.mirrorathlete.org, Sign up for your free eNewsletter.