Work hard, Play harder, Train the hardest.

Some people love to work out while others (the majority!) find it a drag and can’t wait to hit the showers and head home. Well wouldn’t it be great to spend as little time as possible working out whilst receiving maximum benefits? Sounds too good to be true..?

Whether you’re an avid gym user or not I’m sure you have been made aware of the recent surge of interest in HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training. A recent TV program looked into the effects of short sharp bursts of intense exercise and found it to be beneficial to health status. People are going mad for high intensity training and great results are being seen from shorter workouts at maximum effort.

            Most of my clients only see me for half an hour – they all say they couldn’t survive a longer session! – Needless to say I am a massive fan of HIIT for my own, and my clients training. Despite the benefits seen in speed, strength, power and body comp I also save loads of time training this way. Whether you want to set your alarm that bit later in the morning or get home earlier to enjoy your evening, HIIT may be for you if you want to maximize results without spending hours slogging away in the gym.

I’m going to take Sprinting as my example exercise. Sprint training is favored by many athletes as it builds fast twitch muscle fibers and is highly effective for fat burning. Replacing long cardiovascular workouts on treadmills and cross trainers with sprint training a few times a week could result in huge benefits for you. You just have to remember one rule – you must perform at 100% intensity.  

The Sciencey bit

When the body performs any explosive movement at a high intensity it releases growth hormone (HGH) in the days to follow to aid recovery. It has been shown that a 30 second all-out sprint increased HGH 530% over baseline levels. High growth hormone levels are ideal for keeping body fat low and building lean muscle, thus increasing your metabolic rate.

Sprinting will increase the size of the mitochondria in your cells which is the part of the cell that stores energy. This makes the body more efficient at releasing energy so it has a reduced tendency to store body fat. Therefore, sprinting not only oxidizes fat, it also prevents the body from storing new fat.

When compared to low intensity exercise, sprinting and other high intensity training burns far more fat and calories. A 20-minute workout doing high-intensity sprints is roughly comparable to an hour-long cardio workout at a lower intensity.

So are you convinced? If you want to start HIIT on your next gym visit start with caution as your body needs time to adjust to such high intensities. If you want to try out some sprint training for the first time start out by stretching and doing a little jogging and then work up to moderate intensity sprints, to avoid injuring yourself. After completing moderate intensity sprints for your first few sessions you can start doing full intensity sprints. If you are already a keen sprinter, try your sprints uphill next time.

Combine your HIIT with good dietary practice and you can achieve a lean, strong and powerful body….and have the time to get out and show it off!  

-          For ideas on how to train in this way or to book in your HIIT session with me please get in contact. Lx

Program your body to burn fat

Most people want to lead a healthy lifestyle and follow a good diet pattern and training program to make them feel better and provide a sense of wellness. But ultimately people also do these things to look good. Achieving a slim, toned and strong body is the underlying aim of most people’s efforts. But, despite this desire to look and feel great, the body fat percentages of many of the population are steadily on the rise. People are more interested in their health now than ever before and millions of pounds a year is spent on diet books and different diet products. So with all this hype and all these products and fool proof plans available why do obesity levels continue to rise at such a dramatic rate?

Simple answer….what people are trying clearly DOES NOT WORK. There is no quick fix to healthy living; it requires the correct lifestyle choices to be made continuously for as long as you want to feel fit, healthy and well.

So put down the diet books, stop reading about the latest celebrity fads and start programming your body to burn that excess fat in a healthy, natural way.

Learn to love fat

After years of being told that a low fat diet is best, I am going to need you to completely alter your opinion on this essential nutrient. Fat will not make you fat. It will not directly cause heart disease and will not cause you to suffer a sudden heart attack. Change your relationship with fat and you’re already on the path to reprogramming your body and providing it with the essential nutrients it needs to function correctly.

You need to look a lot closer at the body to understand what causes accumulation of unwanted fat….and by closer I mean microscopically close….to hormones! To save boring you with too much confusing information I will briefly summarise as much as I feel you need to know in order to reprogram your bodies.

Insulin

The key hormone i’m talking about is insulin. Managing your insulin levels is key as if done correctly insulin can help you maintain lean muscle mass (great for metabolism) but if insulin levels are allowed to go haywire so will your waist line (along with your mood and energy levels!). Insulin encourages your body to store fat and inhibits it from utilising your fat stores for energy.

Control your blood sugar

Controlling your insulin response requires control of blood sugar levels. This relates not only to what you are eating but when and how often you are eating. You should never allow your body to be hungry, as the hunger signal is a sign that your blood sugar has dropped too low. Eat to prevent hunger rather than eating because you are already hungry. This will also help you to make good food choices when it comes to eating.

Tip: Keep a small hunger diary so you can pin point times in the day that you have your slump and can prepare to avoid it by carrying small snacks with you or ensuring you have a meal prepared in time.

Eating nutrient poor refined carbohydrates will play havoc with your insulin levels. Protein and fat have a much less insulin stimulating effect than carbohydrate does so ensure all meals and snacks contain a protein and/or healthy fat source to keep insulin levels steady. Foods with high fibre content will also help to release energy slowly to avoid highs and lows.

Reintroduce fat

Following a low fat diet causes a form of eating that stimulates excessive insulin release which I hope you now understand is counter productive and why low fat diets don’t work. Despite the fact you are going to be lacking in essential nutrients from a low fat diet you are also going to struggle to lose weight, maintain a healthy body composition and feel good.

People tend to shy away from fat when they see that it contains more than twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrate (7kcal/g and 4kcal/g, respectively). However, fat has a very strong satiating effect and will keep you feeling full for 3 times longer than carbohydrate. Snacking on processed carbohydrate foods (cereal bar ring any bells..?) may mean you are eating fewer calories in that one snack, but over the day you’re likely to eat more due to a greater frequency of hunger pangs. This type of food will also be stored in a way you don’t want….as excess fat!

By introducing more healthy fat sources into your diet you are going to help to reprogram your body to use fat as a source of fuel. To put it simply, your metabolism will either be set to ‘sugar burn’ or to ‘fat burn’ depending on whether you decide to feed it refined, processed carbohydrate foods or give it what it really needs. A fat burning metabolism is more sustainable, seeing as there is enough fat stored on the average human body to fuel 3.5 days of constant running at marathon pace. It is also healthier for your body, as blood sugar highs and lows that cause excessive insulin secretion are inevitably linked to type 2 diabetes and the numerous health concerns that come hand in hand with this increasingly prevalent disease.

So to avoid myself going off on a tangent and overloading everyone with far too much information I will quickly summarise the key things you should consider to reprogram you metabolism from sugar burner to fat burner. Ensure to keep your blood sugar levels maintained by avoiding refined carbohydrates and including plenty of protein, healthy fats and fibre rich foods in your diet. Avoid hunger and ensure you always have a snack to hand – that isn’t a sugar-laced cereal bar disguised as a ‘diet food’. And finally, get rid of the mentality that ‘low fat is best’. 

I hope you enjoy your next meal, which with the reintroduction of fat will undoubtedly taste great! J

Sports drinks

The functional foods market continues to grow day by day. Avid exercisers are no strangers to functional products designed to help you go longer, get stronger and become leaner. These products are very cleverly designed, advertised and marketed to appeal to the ambitious person inside us all and some people feel ‘naked’ training without them. BUT throughout different blog posts I want to show you that these products are unnecessary, a waste of money, and contain additional ingredients that are damaging your health. I’m focusing on sports drinks as my example today.

Sports Drinks – The soda drink dressed up as ‘healthy’ and ‘functional’

We are a nation of sugar addicts. This addiction has been fuelled by the food industry steadily increasing the sugar content of foods to the point we’re at now where the nasty substance is hard to avoid. Fizzy drinks –or soda- have become a staple in many peoples diet as a way to satisfy this need for sugar.  Following this sugar addiction has become expanding waist lines that have led to an increased demand for ‘diet’ products containing calorie-free sugar replacements – the artificial sweeteners. So people swap the soda for a diet soda, healthy right? Wrong, these ‘diet sodas’ full of artificial sweeteners and flavourings can provide the same taste to satisfy the consumer and keep them coming back for more but the added chemicals breakdown in the body to their toxic counterparts and cause damage.

Many people consume one or more cans of soda each day. As a fit and healthy person you may be feeling smug that you don’t do this. But do you drink a sports drink to fuel your exercise? Just because the product has the word ‘sport’ it in, this does not mean it’s necessarily a healthy choice. Sports drinks make claims that they will help you perform better during athletic events, and I’m not disputing this. Of course a quick supply of glucose is going to keep you going for exercise lasting more than 1 hour, and of course the addition of electrolytes to water will help to hydrate you faster. But will the artificial sweeteners make you run faster, will the flavour enhancers make you reach that PB, or will they disrupt the finely tuned chemical balance within your body….I’m going with the later.

Sports drinks, naturally

Keeping well hydrated during exercise (and throughout life in general) is necessary to maintain peak optimal performance in all that you do. Water helps to regulate your body temperature, lubricate your joints and transport nutrients around your body. During exercise you lose water through sweat and increased respiration, and these losses need to be replaced. The longer and more intensely you train makes this even more important. If you fail to replace lost fluids your blood and plasma volume will decrease leading to muscle cramps, dizziness, fatigue, heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Research has shown that a loss of only 2% body weight from dehydration is enough to negatively affect athletic performance.

Your body also loses valuable electrolytes through sweat that are needed to carry electrical impulses throughout your body to help your cells communicate with each other. The need to replace these electrolytes will depend on the intensity and duration of your training and how much you sweat. I would advise electrolytes to be taken on board for strenuous exercise lasting more than an hour. This is also the case for carbohydrates as it will generally take about an hour for your glycogen stores to become depleted. About 0.7g of carbohydrate as glucose per kg body weight per hour (approx. 30-60g/hour) has been shown to extend endurance performance.

So, taking all of this into account; when you are exercising for longer than an hour swap your plain water for a sports drink containing a simple mixture of water, sodium (0.5-0.7g/L), potassium (0.8-2.0g/L) and glucose (6-8%). Make up your own and add a splash of lemon juice to taste. Next time you pick up a sports drink check the label. How many ingredients are on there? Keep things simple people.

Detoxing in our toxic world

There is a lot of mixed opinion surrounding the issue of detoxing. Some people swear by their regular detox, where as others see them as pointless. To add to the confusion there are also many different detox diets available to choose from. So should you detox, and if so how?

Following a detox plan for a short period of time can help your body to readjust if it has been subjected to chronic stress from poor diet and lifestyle choices. A detox can help to quickly cleanse and heal your system in the event of a health scare or benefit those struggling with immuno-compromised disease such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes and chronic fatigue. A detox can also set people straight if suffering from food intolerance or allergy. They can be used to jump-start a healthy weight loss plan or, quite simply, set you on the right tracks after years of neglect to your health.

Your body has its own built in detoxifying system and detoxification is one of its most basic automatic functions. Your body naturally detoxifies everyday through the colon, liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph and skin. However, we are now living in a toxic world, whether it’s in the food we eat, water we drink or air we breathe, and our natural cleansing proces can become clogged somewhere along the line. At times it may be necessary to give it a helping hand. A detox programme should never be started without caution however. Your body is a finely tuned machine and just as easily as abuse causes disruption, a detox taken too far can cause problems of its own.

Some people love to detox purely for the way it makes them feel. People report increased energy levels, better concentration, better sleep, healthier looking eyes and skin, and a general feeling of wellness. However, some people respond badly to a detox and can feel awful throughout the whole process. This can be the effect of withdrawal from substances such as caffeine, or simply the effect from the elimination of toxins. However, this could also be the result of a badly practiced detox and your body’s way of telling you to stop it.

A gentle detox could be achieved by drinking cleansing teas and plenty of water and eliminating sugar, caffeine, alcohol, processed food and food products. However…shouldn’t you really be following these guidelines all the time (albeit maybe not 100% strictly). And on those occasional times you do fall off the band wagon, isn’t that what our liver and internal cleansing systems are for? Whilst our bodies are well designed to rid themselves of nasties, the environment we live in now is so full of pollutants that our natural defences are being challenged everyday. Maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle and avoiding toxins where possible will help your body to keep up with demand but there may become a time when a little cleanse will be greeted with open arms. Just remember that a detox should only be followed for a short period of time and always under the supervision of a healthcare professional. Whilst a detox is aimed at de-stressing your liver and lymphatic system, following a strict dietary cleanse for too long can create nutritional deficiencies and all the flushing can actually create its own stress on your system.

But why intensely detox only a few times a year? Why not take preventative measures and include some form of detoxification everyday?

Most toxic chemicals we are exposed to in our environment today are lipophilic. This means ‘fat loving’. Our body tries to protect us from these foreign bodies by surrounding them in mucus and fat which then gets trapped and stored somewhere on our bodies. By burning fat, we leave these toxins exposed to cause damage to our bodies, but equally, maintaining unhealthy levels of body fat exposes us to other health problems, plus the problem of all these stored toxins! A toxic body is less willing to burn fat as it wants to prevent the release of these stored toxins. So, rather than waiting until your body becomes clogged, take action now and help your body cleanse itself everyday. Some things you can include in your diet to aid your natural detoxification processes include:

- Gelatinous plant foods- chia seeds or aloe vera for example. The gelatinous fibres in these foods move through the gastrointestinal tract and absorb and bind to toxins. I personally take 60ml of aloe vera juice first thing in the morning, every morning and have certainly noticed a difference in my health since doing so. If you’re interested in including this amazing plant food in your diet, please contact me for more information and advice.

-Green vegetables – their high chlorophyll content is a potent natural cleanser. Try adding a green juice to your daily diet, here’s a few ideas: Celery, lemon and pear; Celery, cucumber, lemon and apple; Celery, cucumber, kale, lemon and pear; Celery, cucumber, spinach and apple.

-Parsley – also a great source of chlorophyll and has an excellent ability to cleanse the blood system.

- Coriander – binds to heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic and lead, to help eliminate them from your system. Coriander is also a powerful antioxidant which is thought to be the reason behind its potent anti-inflammatory effects on the body.

            Try this recipe for a detoxifying pesto: 3 cloves galic, 1/3cup Brazil nuts, 1/3cup sunflower seeds, 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds, 1 cup coriander, 1 cup parsely, 2/3 cup olive oil, 4 tablespoons lemon juice, pinch of sea salt.

Blend all ingredients together…simple!

- Lots of clean water!

Supplementation, sorted!

We live in a pharmaceutical world full of pills, potions and powders all promising to have us firing off all cylinders and ready to tackle what ever this stressful world has to throw at us. Millions of people now have breakfast with a side order of pills. But before you turn yourself into a human rattle, do you actually know if what you are taking is beneficial to your heath or if, in fact, you are wasting your money, or worse still, harming your body?

21^st century malnutrition is the result of modern day food processing. The food we eat today has 50% less nutritional value than it did 50 years ago. Our soils are so intensively farmed that they have been leached of valuable nutrients. Add to this the fact that we can get any variety of fruit and vegetable all year round shipped in from Timbuktu and you’ve got yourself a shopping bag full of lifeless, tasteless, nutritionally deficient food. In order to counteract these problems many people turn to supplementation.

Supplementation is a great way to ensure you are getting the required nutrients into your body to keep you functioning optimally. But it’s not as simple as walking into your local shop and picking up a bottle of X, Y or Z from the shelf because some magazine said you should. Supplementation, as with all nutrition, is completely individual. What one person may need, you may not, and by following what they do you could end up damaging your health rather than benefitting it. The phrase ‘too much of a good thing’ can definitely be used when talking supplementation.

During different life stages – childhood, teens, pregnancy, menopause, old age- you require different things. From different lifestyle factors –activity level, stress, diet, environment, disease-status- you have different needs. There is so much to consider when looking at supplementation that I will always recommend consulting a professional for advice before self-diagnosing. Supplementing your diet is an extremely beneficial thing to do, but only if you do it correctly. For more information and to find out how you should be supplementing your own diet, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me.

Supplementation is also more complicated than individual need…you need to consider the supplement itself and how and when you are taking it.

Determining the good from the bad…

When you walk into any chemist, pharmacist or local health food shop you are faced with row upon row of supplement options to choose from. By process of elimination you may just grab the cheapest one as they’re all the same right? WRONG! Unfortunately, this is one thing you really shouldn’t skimp on. The quality of the supplement is very important to ensure it is easily available for use, your body doesn’t need to use its own resources to break it down and you’re not just going to be paying for very nutritional urine!

Source food based supplements. Vitamins and minerals in this form are recognisable to the body on a molecular level. Many cheap supplement products are synthetic (man-made) and your body cannot recognise their structure which dramatically reduces their bioavailability. Supplementing this way will be more expensive, but doing it the cheaper way is effectively pointless. And besides…you really can’t put a price on your health!

When to take your supplements

The most important thing to remember here is never take your supplements on an empty stomach. Your body will not absorb the supplement and all the goodness will be lost in your urine. Also consider that nutrients work in synergy and this needs to be addressed when you take your supplements. For example, iron is absorbed better in the presence of vitamin C so should be taken with a vitamin C rich meal.

In many cases people will require some form of supplementation protocol that they will follow daily. But not everyday is the same and you may need to include additional supplements in response to changes such as illness, intensity of training, the time of year, monthly cycle, stress and sleep patterns etc. Working with a professional can help you to determine a good supplementation procedure to work with you, your body and its ever changing needs.

And finally…I couldn’t write about supplementation without the cliché…Supplementation will not and should not make up for bad diet and lifestyle choices. If you don’t look after yourself in the first place, popping a few pills each day isn’t going to help you. As I mentioned above, nutrients work in synergy and supplements won’t work on a nutritionally depleted body.

Supplement to support your diet and lifestyle not to make up for it.

:)