A lot of my clients struggle with the conundrum of fruit. Fruit has vitamins,
anti-oxidants, fiber and it tastes great. Many people are baffled when I
recommend cutting back or cutting it out completely from their diets. A lot of
people have become conditioned to skip down to jamba juice or their gym’s juice
bar to down a “healthy” shake with fruit after their spin class. Though
post-workout is an optimal time to give yourself some carbs to recover, the type
of carbs is everything. Fruit and juices are made up of a sugar called fructose.
Fructose mainly restores the glycogen in your liver which can have you feeling
like you’re giving your body exactly what it needs but when it comes to body
composition that is not the case. After a hard workout, the muscles you worked
are begging for their glycogen levels to be restored. Glucose does a way better
job of this than Fructose does. It skips past the liver the way you skipped to
jamba juice and goes directly to your muscles. Carb sources such as potatoes,
yams, corn, legumes and maltodextrin-based drinks will restock the glycogen in
your muscles nicely. This will allow for longer, harder subsequent workers.

Does Fruit equal Fat?

Well….yes. Its molecular structure causes the liver to turn it from a
long-chain fatty acid to a long-chain triglyceride which is easily stored in the
body as fat. Try to limit yourself to one serving of fruit a day and when
possible get the vitamins, fiber, and antioxidants from other foods.

Easily the most popular health and fitness goal is how to lose weight fast. Now before we go any further let’s make a couple of things clear: Oftentimes people associate losing weight with losing bodyfat and gaining a more aesthetic looking physique. Recognize that losing weight and losing bodyfat are two completely different goals. Sometimes they both occur simultaneously but that is not always the case and it is not always necessary to lose weight to lose bodyfat.

Muscle does not weigh more than fat. This bears repeating: Muscle does not weigh more than fat. It is denser in volume, thus takes up less space than fat. You can find my favorite analogy in any gym. If you look at the big, soft, bouncy stability balls and the smaller, harder medicine balls you can see that they take up more space than the heavier, smaller medicine balls. So if improving body composition aka looking better naked are part of your fitness goals, then just using the number on the scale and nothing else could set you up for failure. (more…)