Your Questions... Answered!

Question: What is the best way to eat for someone who works a desk job and has not yet made regular exercise a habit and needs to kick start his metabolism and help him lose weight?

Answer:

1. Add in exercise. Exercise will help to boost lean muscle mass and muscle burns calories while sitting still which will kick start your metabolism.
- Try sneaking in exercise to get started: instead of fast-forwarding through commercial breaks, do crunches or push-ups.
- Consider enlisting the support of a personal trainer to help you create an exercise routine that is right for you!
- A bit more extreme but interesting is treadmill desks; check out this recent article from NPR on companies that are providing treadmill desks for their employees.

2. Sip on green tea.  Adding in plain green tea to your routine is linked to boosting metabolism; the benefits seem to be from the most abundant catechin in green tea, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). Research shows the link to metabolism boosting when about 5 - 6 cups of green tea is consumed per day (Journal of the American College of Nutrition 2007)!

A word of caution... each cup (8 fluid ounces) of green tea has about 25 milligrams of caffeine. If you are drinking other caffeine containing beverages, cut back on other sources of caffeine coming from soda, coffee and skip energy drinks.

3. Sleep. Getting enough sleep (7-9 hours per night) is linked to helping keep weight in part by controlling appetite hormones. This partly because during sleep appetite hormones are regulated - specifically leptin (keeps you full) and ghrelin (makes you hungry). Without enough sleep here is what happens: leptin levels in the body decline and ghrelin levels increase... the result a bigger than necessary appetite!

Do you have a nutrition question you would like answered? Sumbit your questions at my Web site: http://www.creativenutritionsolutions.com/contactus.aspx