Anaerobic vs. Aerobic

So how do you determine which energy source you are in need of?

First and foremost lets address one very important issue: We should never use protein as our energy source.  In order for your body to use protein for an energy source, your body has to convert the protein into carbohydrate which is a very inefficient process for creating energy AND it is not particularly healthy.  We don't need to go into depth regarding all of that right now.  The main point here is that your body needs to use protein for the purpose of repairing healthy tissue like muscle.  This is how it will recover from workouts, increase muscle levels, increase metabolism etc.

So now for the carbohydrate vs. fat.  

As we discussed before:

Anaerobic exercise is performed using carbohydrate as energy and aerobic exercise is performed using fat as energy.  

Aerobic exercise is low intensity exercise.  This includes walking, sitting, sleeping, watching TV, etc.  If you are in shape, it can also include jogging, biking, etc.  However if you are out of shape then those more vigorous activities will most likely get your heart rate up to a higher level causing your body to shift into an anaerobic (carbohydrate burning) state.

Anaerobic exercise is high intensity exercise.  This includes sprinting, weight lifting, jumping, and anything else that is vigorous and causes you to get short of breath.  As I mentioned above, many activities that people believe are aerobic can actually be anaerobic if your aerobic system is not in good shape.

Many people want to know which one is better (anaerobic or aerobic).  There is no "better" between the two.  They are both critically important in order to achieve optimum results.  The key is learning to eat the proper nutrients for the proper activities.  Now that we have gone over these aspects, in my next posting we will go into more details for deciding how to eat.

In the past few years High Fat High Protein diets have become very popular and because