This is an interesting article I found on the My Net Diary Blog
SEDENTARY ATHLETES: SITTING & WEIGHTING
-Excerpted and reprinted with permission from The Athlete’s Kitchen by Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD, specially for MyNetDiary.
Imagine this: a lean, fit athlete who trains hard, eats heartily, and does not fret about getting fat. While this image holds true for some athletes, it seems far from reality for others. All too often, I listen to my clients complain, “I should be pencil thin for all the exercise I do.” Or they moan, “I eat like a bird compared to my friends…” How could this be?
The answer is many athletes burn far fewer calories than they realize; they are actually couch potatoes the majority of the day. These seemingly active people can be surprisingly sedentary, apart from their purposeful exercise.
Think about it. The majority of your waking hours can easily be spent sitting, with TV and computers being the primary culprits that induce sedentary behaviors. The average athletic person sits at breakfast; drives to work, sits all day, drives to the gym, exercises for 45 to 90 minutes, drives home, sits at dinner, and then sits in front of a screen before going to bed. Even competitive athletes who do double workouts often live a sedentary lifestyle. They generally do little but rest and recover during the non-exercise parts of their day.
According to Neville Owen, speaker at the American College of Sports Medicine’s Annual Meeting (Seattle, May ’09), the average person sits 9.3 hours a day. Even if you are physically fit, this high amount of inactivity is bad for your health. Exercise reduces health risks in both lean and overweight people, even if the exercise is not associated with weight loss. Owen reports the more a person sits, the higher the risk of mortality. Hence, we not only need to find time to exercise, we also need to find ways to sit less—for example, bike to work, pace when talking on the phone, stand up when writing emails. (To elevate the height of your laptop computer, put it on top of a cardboard box that you put on top of your desk.) Why, we could even reduce our carbon footprint by hanging laundry outside to dry on a clothesline. That would not only add on exercise but also save energy!
Because activity has been engineered out of our lives, non-exercisers and avid athletes alike can easily spend too much time doing too little activity. For example, we no longer use our muscles to open the garage door, lower the car window, wash laundry, or even walk down the hall to ask a colleague a question (email is easier). For many of us, the primary movement we get in a day is our purposeful workout/training session. Hence, the goal of this article is to increase your awareness of your 24-hour activity level, and encourage you to take steps (no pun intended) to move a bit more and sit a bit less throughout the waking hours of your day.
Sitting & Weighting
People who sit a lot tend to gain undesired body fat. The more they sit, the fatter they get. Fatness heightens the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases. These health risks start at a young age. A recent study with sedentary teens reports just four weekly 30-minute workouts with moderate aerobic activity was enough to stimulate major health improvements (1). And isn’t it scary to think teens are already afflicted with the so-called “diseases of aging”…?
Both sedentary and active people of all ages commonly assume their undesired body fat will melt away effortlessly once they start exercising. Not the case. A study with sedentary people (ages 56 to 78 years) who added one hour of brisk walking a day indicates they did not lose undesired body fat, despite adding the hour of exercise and eating no additional food. How could that be???
They failed to lose weight because they napped more and slept more! In the course of the 24-hour day, they compensated for the extra activity by conserving energy and being more sedentary at other times of the day (2). Endurance athletes tend to so the same thing (3). Many fail to acknowledge how inactive they are when they stop training. Hence, exercise enhances fat loss if it contributes to a 24-hour calorie deficit. But all too often, athletes burn off 600 calories when training, only to refuel with 800 calories of bon-bons while watching TV … counterproductive!
Fidgeters vs sitters
Some (generally weight-conscious) athletes love to be sedentary. They look forward to finishing their workout, settling into their Laz-y-boy chair, putting their feet up, turning on the TV, and vegging-out for hours on end. Yet, other (lean) athletes rarely sit, and when they do, they can’t sit still. They shift and wiggle in their chairs, and are very good fidgeters. Their desire to fidget is genetic, starts at birth, and explains why they prefer to relax by puttering (as opposed to sitting and reading)—and why they eat more than the sedentary athletes who eat like birds.
While fidgeters may enjoy having a “fast metabolism,” sedentary athletes often complain they have a “slow metabolism.” They eat small portions, yet have undesired body fat. They commonly believe something is wrong with their bodies. The truth is, they barely move their bodies in the course of a day—other than during their five mile run or one hour spin class. Nothing is medically wrong with them. (Or, they may fail to acknowledge how much they actually do eat!
To their detriment, sedentary athletes (who are good at sitting) tend to burn fewer calories than they realize over the course of the day. Similarly, obese people (who are good at sitting) tend to sit 2.5 hours more than their peers; this saves them about 350 calories a day (4). A good fidgeter, in comparison, can burn an extra 300 to 500 calories per day. So the question arises: does obesity foster sedentary behavior? Or does the tendency to be sedentary foster obesity?
The Bottom Line
If weight is an issue, try to be more active throughout the day, not just during your exercise sessions. Figure out how to move your body in ways that have purpose and meaning: walk the dog, scrub the floor, walk to the post office. Your health and waistline will be glad you did!
Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics) counsels both casual and competitive athletes in her private practice at Healthworks, the premier fitness center in Chestnut Hill MA (617-383-6100). Her Sports Nutrition Guidebook, and food guides for new runners, marathoners, soccer players and cyclists are available viawww.nancyclarkrd.com. See also www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com for upcoming and online workshops.
References
1. van der Heijden G, Z Wang, Z Chu, P Sauer, M Haymond, L Rodriguez, A Sunehag. 2009.A 12-Week Aerobic Exercise Program Reduces Hepatic Fat Accumulation and Insulin Resistance in Obese, Hispanic Adolescents. Obesity, Aug 20. [Epub ahead of print]
2. Goran M, E Poehlman. 1992. Endurance training does not enhance total energy expenditure in healthy elderly persons. Am J Physiol 263: E950-957
3. Edwards J, A. Lindeman, A Mikesky, J Stager. 1993. Energy balance in highly trained female endurance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc 25(12) 1398-1404.
4. Levine J, M Vander Weg, J Hill, R Klesges. 2006. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis: the crouching tiger hidden dragon of societal weight gain. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 26(4):729-36
MapMyFITNESS recently launched a Nutrition Center to help our members educate themselves on healthy foods and develop better habits. As part of our effort to get you all thinking about better nutrition, we’ve brought on our very own Team Chef, Biju Thomas. Biju is a lifelong cyclist and chef based in Denver, Colorado. He has worked with top teams and names in cycling for years, including most recently with Lance Armstrong. He frequently appears on TV dispensing tasty and healthy food ideas. Each month, Biju will offer up some great nutrition content. This month, Biju talks about low-gluten and gluten-free diets.
I often get asked about low-gluten or gluten-free foods for active lives. In the past few years, a great number of top endurance athletes have adopted this approach to food with all sorts of success stories. What is it, and how can most people at home make sense of this 
approach to cooking and eating?
approach to cooking and eating?First, “gluten-free” is a bit too broad. Since most all grains have some version of gluten, what we are going for are foods that are low in, or completely absent of, wheat gluten.
There are numerous reasons that people cite for avoiding wheat and wheat products in their diet, but most athletes simply state that they “feel” better.
I’ve cooked for plenty of cyclists and runners who can go down a long list of benefits they’ve noticed from eliminating wheat: even body temperatures leading to better sleep, quicker recovery after workouts, better ability to focus and more intense efforts, to list a few.
“While some of these claims may be legit, there really have been no published scientific studies on the effects of a gluten-free diet for those who do not have wheat allergies, or specifically for those looking to boost an active/athletic lifestyle,” says Dr. Allen Lim, Director of Sports Sciences for MapMyFITNESS and Team Radio Shack.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to do a low-gluten or gluten-free diet, the cooking part really is quite simple. Eliminate or be aware of the few items we most associate with wheat gluten; breads, pastries and pastas. There are quite a few gluten-free options available in most supermarkets.
About a year ago, Dr. Lim and I did a month-long study of every type of pasta we could find, from brown rice to quinoa to corn. We cooked and stored each in different ways, compared flavors and had our riders and runners try them all. Most of us like the consistency and rich flavor of classic Italian style pasta that we grew up with, and the quinoa blend offers the closest version; it’s also very easy to store and handle. It may not be readily available everywhere, but in the U.S., most natural grocers do carry it now.
Rice pasta is easily accessible with a neutral flavor, but you have to be careful while cooking because it’ll quickly go from undercooked to mush. If you’re cooking for a lot of people, say a large pro bike team, and storing pasta for later, this type gets tricky. Always cook only to “al-dente,” cool immediately in flat pan in fridge and coat with olive oil to keep from clumping.
If not pasta, then the easiest and most available source of “good carbs” for an athlete is from rice: white rice before an event, white or brown rice afterward. The simple formula is “less fiber before an event or training day, and more after,” according to Dr. Lim.
Easy replacements are any variety of potatoes, corn cakes, polenta, tortillas and oats. Be careful and read the ingredients on gluten-free labels; most gluten-free foods are made from various bean flours, which are high in protein, so make sure you’re getting all the carbs you need.
Once people make the change to a low-gluten diet, what Dr. Lim and I notice is that they automatically begin to make better choices in their day-to-day eating habits. They quickly avoid packaged foods, drink more water and begin to consume more fresh fruits and vegetables.
Gluten is everywhere, especially in prepackaged and “convenience” foods. While the science behind all the claims may be lagging, the reality is you will most likely feel and perform better simply because you are more aware of what you are eating, and making much better daily food choices.
