THE SCIENCE BEHIND MISSION LEAN

Why Lean Body Fitness?

We would like to present you with this statement:  All workouts are not created equal.

How you determine your approach to fitness will come down to one simple question:  If you have 30 minutes in the day to work out—which is typical of most people—what type of workout are you going to do?  

Your workout should not be random.  It shouldn’t be a poorly thought out combination of weights, cardio and whatever else you can fit in.  You must target your workout—focusing on getting the “biggest bang for your buck”— to reap the maximum result.

Alter Your Metabolism

There has recently been the emergence of a new scientific field: Metabolomics.  Metabolomics allows scientists to get a clear window into a person’s metabolism through blood analysis.

Metabolites are the products of metabolic reactions in the cells — like amino acids, vitamins, and alcohols — and scientists can measure these metabolites in our bodies and in turn determine how well our metabolism is functioning.

Previous studies showed that active people had much different metabolisms than sedentary people — different levels of good cholesterol and other favorable ratios of proteins that are good for heart health.  But this didn’t look at how different types of exercise truly affect us.

A brand new study aimed to figure out how different types of exercise affect our metabolism, and the conclusion was both clear and striking: aerobic fitness affects your metabolism significantly more than strength does.  

When the scientists compared those pursuing a weight-based training program to those pursuing an aerobic fitness program (based around lean body fitness), they found that those on the aerobic program had significant improvements in their metabolic profiles.  Those who followed a weight-based training program had no change in their metabolisms when compared to people who didn’t exercise at all.  Put simply, the only way to truly change your metabolism is through lean body, aerobic-based workouts—the type of workouts the Mission Lean offers.

Pursue Fountain of Youth Fitness: Telomeres and Lean Body Fitness

It is now understood that aerobic, lean body training has a direct impact on making our cells biologically younger, whereas weight training does not have the same effect.

Again, we need to think about how exercise affects us at a molecular level—and which type of exercise has the most profound effect.  The question remains: If you only have 30 minutes in the day to work out, what are you going to do?  You want to focus on the workout that will get you the maximum physiological response.

Telomeres cap the tips of our chromosomes and guard DNA from damage as cells divide, and they are important in determining how quickly we age.   Because cells divide over time, telomeres shorten and become damaged as our cells get older, to the point that they eventually no longer protect our DNA.  This is when the cell dies. 

Telomere length, according to scientists, is the best measure of the functional age of a cell.  But telomeres are changeable and they can be lengthened or shortened as a result of the way a person lives and how much they exercise. 

Previous studies demonstrated that people who ran often had longer telomeres, but the studies didn’t actually prove that the running caused this.  The studies only showed that the two things were associated with one another.

A new study examined how different types of exercise affect telomeres.  The scientists separated exercise participants into three groups: endurance training, interval training, and resistance training.  The result? Endurance training and interval training had a direct effect on telomere length, but resistance training (weight training) did not. 

Those who did the weight training workouts had telomeres that were the same as those in the control group, which was comprised of people who didn’t exercise at all. 

The conclusion is clear: aerobic-based training is the only workout that extends telomeres and slows cellular aging.

Burn Fat After Your Workout:  The EPOC Response

Right in line with the benefits of an improved metabolism and anti-aging effects that come from lean body fitness, EPOC (Excess post oxygen consumption) only comes about through an aerobic, lean body workout.  Your ultimate goal, however, is to achieve what is referred to as an “anaerobic” workout, which we will explore now and which is the gold standard for enacting huge physiological change within your body.

Your body requires calories to consume oxygen—precisely 5 calories of energy to consume 1 liter of oxygen.  If you can push yourself in your workout enough—to the point that you reach an oxgyen deficit — your body will continue to intake large amounts of oxygen after the workout to fill in for this deficit.  This will in turn allow you to burn additional calories after your workout has ended—because it requires calories to intake oxygen.  You will be BURNING CALORIES AT REST, well after your workout has ended.  This is the EPOC effect and you should strive for it!

The key to getting the highest EPOC response is to create the largest oxygen deficit possible during your workout.  An oxygen deficit can only be created in an anaerobic state (vs. aerobic state).

ATP (adenosine triphospate) is the fuel to move our body and is the primary energy carrier in all living organisms.  The body is most efficient at producing ATP (energy) through the aerobic metabolism—in which the body uses oxygen to produce ATP.  

At higher intensities of exercise the lungs are unable to deliver enough oxygen to the bloodstream to allow for aerobic metabolism, and at this point, the anaerobic pathways become active, which can provide the necessary ATP much faster so the body can continue to function.

In an anaerobic state, your body produces ATP through the use of carbohydrates that are stored in your body, when there is no oxygen—when the demands of the muscles for energy aren’t being satisfied by oxygen coming from your lungs. 

This is where the oxygen deficit comes into play—the oxygen deficit being the difference between the amount of oxygen consumed during exercise and the amount that would have been consumed if your energy needs had been provided for through the aerobic pathways.

When you work out within the anaerobic state, you are creating an oxygen deficit within your body.  The longer you can stay within the anaerobic state in your workout, the greater your EPOC effect will be.  The greater your EPOC effect, the more calories you will burn in the hours after your workout finishes—in turn gaining the maximum physiological effect from your workout.

The Science Behind Mission Lean Nutrition

When you are training at 80% of your maximal heart rate — in the anaerobic zone—  85% of your consumed calories come from carboyhdrates, 14% come from fat, and 1% come from protein

Therefore, when you pursue lean body fitness, YOU SHOULD MAINLY BE EATING CARBOHYDRATES, NOT PROTEIN!   So forget the Keto Diet! This philosophy might be counter to much of what you hear out there in mainstream fitness propaganda, whether it’s the Keto Diet or other recommendations to “make sure you eat enough protein.”  When you’re training with a lean body fitness approach, you fuel your workouts with carbs, plain and simple.  This is why committing to your fitness approach once and for all is so important, because doing so will dictate everything from what type of workout you do every day, to what you eat, to how you feel and live. 

Glycogen stores in the muscles fuel anaerobic workouts — that’s the essence of reaching the anaerobic zone.  Keto and Atkins deplete all glycogen stores from the muscles.  That is what Ketosis is: The body is burning fat because it no longer has carbohydrates to burn.   You cannot do anaerobic workouts— lean body workouts — on a Ketogenic diet

At the beginning of this article we covered the different approaches to fitness: lean body fitness versus weight-lifting fitness.  Again, we must revisit the question: if you have 30 minutes to work out on a given day, what are you going to do?  Are you going to lift heavy weights, go for a run, or do a circuit of body weight exercises and plyometrics?  How are you going to train?  The lean body way, or the weight-lifting way?  Hopefully the many scientific studies we have covered have convinced you, as they have us, that lean body fitness is the gold standard.  

Whichever way you go, you must match your eating to the way you train.  You need to consume the correct proportion of carbohydrates to fats and proteins to fuel your workout so you can get the most out of it. 

Consistent anaerobic training will optimize your muscles’ ability to store glycogen.  You will begin to eat less and less because the muscles become more efficient at absorbing and storing the fuel that they anticipate requiring.