More Protein helps in satiety

At last we are moving away from the idea of eating 6 times a day.....Forget grazing and eat more protein.

The influence of higher protein intake and greater eating frequency on appetite control in overweight and obese men.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of dietary protein intake and eating frequency on perceived appetite, satiety, and hormonal responses in overweight/obese men. Thirteen men (age 51 +/- 4 years; BMI 31.3 +/- 0.8 kg/m(2)) consumed eucaloric diets containing normal protein (79 +/- 2 g protein/day; 14% of energy intake as protein) or higher protein (138 +/- 3 g protein/day; 25% of energy intake as protein) equally divided among three eating occasions (3-EO; every 4 h) or six eating occasions (6-EO; every 2 h) on four separate days in randomized order. Hunger, fullness, plasma glucose, and hormonal responses were assessed throughout 11 h. No protein x eating frequency interactions were observed for any of the outcomes. Independent of eating frequency, higher protein led to greater daily fullness (P < 0.05) and peptide YY (PYY) concentrations (P < 0.05). In contrast, higher protein led to greater daily ghrelin concentrations (P < 0.05) vs. normal protein. Protein quantity did not influence daily hunger, glucose, or insulin concentrations. Independent of dietary protein, 6-EO led to lower daily fullness (P < 0.05) and PYY concentrations (P < 0.05). The 6-EO also led to lower glucose (P < 0.05) and insulin concentrations (P < 0.05) vs. 3-EO. Although the hunger-related perceived sensations and hormonal responses were conflicting, the fullness-related responses were consistently greater with higher protein intake but lower with increased eating frequency. Collectively, these data suggest that higher protein intake promotes satiety and challenge the concept that increasing the number of eating occasions enhances satiety in overweight and obese men.

The whole paper is available here

EPOC again...intervals again....

That old area of dispute about the post exercise impact of exercise in terms of calorie burn has popped up again:

In a new study, researchers show that exercisers can burn as many as 200 extra calories in as little as 2.5 minutes of concentrated effort a day -- as long as they intersperse longer periods of easy recovery in a practice known as sprint interval training.

Analyzing results from the room calorimeter system showed that the volunteers burned an average of an extra 200 calories on the sprint interval workout day, despite spending just 2.5 minutes engaged in hard exercise. Though the researchers can't yet speculate on whether such efforts could translate into weight loss, Sevits and his colleagues suggest that engaging in intense, but brief, bursts of exercise could aid in weight maintenance. "Burning an extra 200 calories from these exercises a couple of times a week can help keep away that pound or two that many Americans gain each year," 

Sleep....

I have often posted on here about the importance of sleep.  If you have not yet got the message then please listen to Chris Kresser's latest podcast on Revolution Health Radio where he interviews Dan Pardi who is a scientist researching sleep and its importance for health.  Dan is also behind the superb Dan's Plan  


Anyway you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript on the site, either way it is full of some really useful and important information.

Why Most People Are Sleep-deprived and What to do About it

Best of all Dan gives some ideas for improving sleep.  Nothing about this is rocket science, but it is all good stuff.   

The thing is, I have written about this before, but my own sleep routine is not great.  I tend to get to bed too late and have been waking up in the night stressing about things.  One thing that I need to address is the internet.  I am getting too addicted to checking, checking and checking - email, twitter, facebook, google reader.  Not much is actually new or that exciting but there is this self imposed pressure to KEEP UP TO DATE....with a lot of pointless drama!  My iphone is the first thing I reach for in the morning and even sometimes if I wake in the middle of the night.  This is not healthy.

There was a good post by a backpacker in the States last week who talked about going without his phone / internet for a while and how it made him feel - truly relaxed!  It is also worth reading and reflecting on.  

Disconnected

But the experiment got me thinking, anyway. Since moving back to Keene, I've been doing things differently than last year. I've cut down drastically on my Internet usage, mostly by cutting out all of my use of forums and web communities. I used to kill hours browsing through discussions on Backpackinglight.com, but I realized I was getting nothing from that community except more and more frustration at the tone of many conversations. I read fewer blogs now, I avoid most news sites, I don't much care what news I'm missing. I feel more relaxed in general, and I now have drastically more time to read books, enjoy the home life, and work on my other projects.

Interval training....with no intervals

If you take the rest intervals out of an interval session.....you get a single all out sprint.  Why do we assume you need to do lots of separate sprints?  Just because Tabata has become a training cliche? Would we get the same effects from a single hard sprint?  Why not?

Well at last scientists are starting to look at this idea.  If we want to keep things simple, lets start with one hard sprint before we start to add complexity.

Check out what James Steele has to say about this idea and the recent new research.

Simply Single Bout Sprinting

....and of course if a single sprint works, why not just do hard resistance training, working to sequentially recruit as many fibres as possible, taking the exercises to failure?

48" single leg box jump

I've not had a big jump video on here for a while.  This is stunning......

Walking and more

I've not put anything on here for a few days.  I've been busy with work and then I've been trying to write up some stuff on my other blog about recent walks, in Austria and then on the West Highland Way.

Austria

The West Highlands

I should have a bit more time now though to put things up here.  The other thing that is going on in the back ground is a little more work on Hillfit, which might see a new expanded version of the book in a few months, with some other services around it, but it is early days.

Follow me on Twitter

I used to use a widget on this blog to share links to interesting things that I was reading via Google Reader, but they took that functionality off.  I often tweet links to things that I have come across that are of interest, so you might want to follow me on Twitter @chrishighcock if you miss that service.  I am pretty broad in my interests - fitness, diet, hillwalking......

Exercise improves brain function....

The way in which movement affects and effects brain development is something that fascinates me.  I have nothing much to say here other than to record my wonder at how something so mundane is of such importance!  Moving, practicing new skills generates new growth in the brain, new connections new specific intelligence.

I have previously pointed to Ratey's book Spark!  but there is more out there on this topic.  Tim Anderson - Becoming Bulletproof - has developed some cool ideas around applying simple tactics, like crawling.  Tim also expose me to the book Smart Moves by Carla Hannaford, which was the foundation for some of his ideas, again a very useful read.

Todd Hargrove also has a huge wealth of thinking on this topic.

Anyway, I was prompted to think about this again by this report of how Exercise improves memory, thinking after stroke

However, Ms. Marzolini says, "these results provide compelling evidence that by improving cardiovascular fitness through aerobic exercise and increasing muscle mass with resistance training, people with stroke can improve brain health."