By: Chris Gates

Welcome back for another installment of the Q&A! This week, we’re diving into three reader questions that I think are really interesting:

• Should you weigh food cooked or frozen?
• How can you target different areas of the chest?
• Can breakfast jump start your metabolism?

As always, if you have a question please feel free to send it my way and I’ll add it to the mix for a future Q&A! On to the questions…

I have frozen chicken breasts that I cook pretty regularly. For calorie counting, I’m curious if I should be weighing the chicken frozen or cooked?

I love questions like this one because, even though the answer is quite simple, it’s proof that you’re thinking about not only the big picture but also the little details.

Weighing food frozen or cooked is really up to you. The big key is for you to be consistent with it.

Yes, there can be slight deviations in weight when you’re measuring a cooked piece of meat as compared to a frozen one, but how you do it consistently is what really matters. If you’re weighing the meat frozen each time, you’re going to get the same amount of calories per 5 oz or 6 oz or whatever your serving size is. Same goes for if you consistently weigh it cooked.

Where you can potentially get into trouble is if sometimes you weigh it frozen, and other times you weigh it cooked. Then we’re not operating with serving sizes that are relative to reach other.

For chicken, the margin for error between cooked and frozen is much smaller than the margin for error on something like a piece of steak. Since chicken is so low in fat and calories, if you’re an ounce off you luckily won’t add too many unintended calories back into your diet. With steak, or other meats higher in fat, you could run into some problems.

If we expand the scope of this question and simply look at any frozen foods, my recommendation is still to just be consistent. For instance, I always weigh my meat cooked, but I’ll weigh vegetables frozen. It just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me to cook frozen vegetables, and then weigh them, and then potentially not eat some of the frozen vegetables that I just cooked if they don’t fit within my calories or macros.

Do what makes sense and is most practical for you, and once you decide what that looks like try and be as consistent with it as you possibly can.

Hey, Chris. I could use your expertise on lower pec exercises. Should I do decline bench press? Anything else?

This question comes at the right time, as I’m currently working on an article all about building a bigger chest.

So let’s talk some of the basics.

For starters, there is an upper pec and a lower pec. You can target each area differently by performing different exercises, but no one exercise will target just the upper or just the lower pec.

Many people go the route of decline pressing to target the lower portion of the pec directly, but in my opinion this movement is more or less useless.

Flat pressing, when performed correctly, will give you a significant stimulus to the lower pec. That’s because to perform a flat press correctly, you should have your scapula retracted (shoulders tucked back and down) and have a slight natural arch in your lower back. This effectively protects your shoulders during the movement and puts as much emphasis on the pecs as possible.

You can also add in an incline press to put more emphasis on the upper pec, and polish things off with some variation of a chest fly to provide yourself a well-rounded chest workout.

Those three movements aren’t fancy, but they’re going to get the job done if you focus on slowly and progressively adding reps/weight over time while performing each rep with excellent form and technique. Perform somewhere between 10-20 hard sets a week.

If those recommendations aren’t helping you build muscle, then it’s probably time to look at your nutrition, sleep, and other factors related to recovery to figure out why you’re not building muscle.

I’ve heard having breakfast in the morning jump starts your metabolism. Does that mean skipping breakfast (aka doing intermittent fasting) is the wrong approach if I’m trying to lose weight?

I like questions about metabolism, because it’s a very misunderstood mechanism in the human body.

To start, let’s define metabolism. In a nutshell, it comprises all of the reactions within the human body that lead to catabolism (breakdown) and anabolism (construction). From a health and fitness perspective, we often view metabolism in the lens of how much weight you’re losing (aka fat loss, or fat catabolism) or how much muscle you’re building (anabolism).

And the thing about metabolism is it’s incredibly powerful, and also incredibly hard to influence. Largely, your metabolism is influenced by long-term habits and changes in the body. So while you may see or hear about tricks to jump start your metabolism, it’s just not something that occurs with a snap of your fingers. It takes time, by way of introducing healthy habits.

For instance, consistent long-term habits such as healthy eating and exercise can “speed up” metabolism over time, whereas poor lifestyle habits can cause it to slow down. But overall, the changes you can make are minimal and your metabolism itself isn’t likely the culprit for your weight gain, weight loss, or other issues.

It’s rooted in your lifestyle habits.

That sets the stage well for the answer to your question. In short, a single meal can’t and won’t drastically impact your metabolism. Eating breakfast or skipping breakfast is not going to make a noticeable impact in the pursuit of your weight loss goal.

There are a lot of claims that sound great about a specific diet, or type of food, or supplement, etc. It’s easy to find things that will tell you they “speed up” your metabolism.

It’s just not true.

In the end, being in a calorie deficit (burning more calories than you consume) consistently over a long period of time is what will lead to weight loss. All of those claims, tips, tricks, hacks, etc. that you hear and see work because they help you get into a calorie deficit.

It’s literally the one and only deciding factor for weight loss.

In this question, you mentioned you’re doing intermittent fasting. That diet strategy — which is one I find to be very effective for a lot of people — works because it puts you on an eating schedule where the feeding window is small. That makes it easy to limit calories, and in turn get into a calorie deficit.

That’s it. That’s the magic.

You can’t have a single meal, or a day’s worth of meals change the outlook of your metabolism. Largely, it’s determined for you, so you need to find what works regarding your nutrition and lifestyle habits.

But just for fun, here’s a list of things that CAN boost your metabolism when done over a long period of time:

• Eating whole, nutritious foods
• Regular exercise
• Building muscle
• Eating more food

Thanks for reading!