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First, your sleep patterns and energy levels will feel the effects. Eventually, your immune system crashes, and you lose your appetite. Sound familiar?
Pay attention to the following 10 markers. If three or more of these indicators raise a red flag, you should consider a few easy sessions or off days so you can return to exercising strong and ready to put the effort in. Learning to love rest can help your overall goals when trying to change your health.

RESTING HEART RATE: Your resting heart rate is elevated
Take your pulse each morning before you get out of bed to find what’s normal for you. An elevated resting heart rate is one sign of stress. It means your nervous system prepared for fight or flight by releasing hormones that sped up your heart to move more oxygen to the muscles and brain. Your body won’t know the difference between physical and psychological stress.

SLEEP: You didn’t sleep well or enough
A pattern of consistently good sleep will give you a boost of growth hormones, which are great for rebuilding muscle fibres. Several nights in a row of bad sleep will decrease reaction time along with immune, motor, and cognitive functions—not a good combination for a workout.

HYDRATION: Your pee is dark yellow
This can be an indicator of dehydration, barring the consumption of vitamins, supplements, or certain foods the evening before. The darker the colour, the more you’re struggling to retain fluids, because there’s not enough to go around. You need H2O to operate and recover.

ENERGY LEVEL: You’re run down
If your energy level is low, there’s something amiss. The key is honesty. Sometimes we can block out signs of fatigue to push through it, thinking it will make them stronger. It won’t always work that way.

MOOD STATE: You’re cranky
When your body is overwhelmed by training or other stressors, it produces hormones like cortisol that can cause irritability or anxiety. Stress also halts chemicals like dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that has a big bummer effect on mood when depleted. Crankiness probably means not enough recovery has taken place and you’re not ready for that next workout .

WELLNESS: You’re sick
Any illness will increase your need for energy to refuel your immune system, which is having to work overtime. This means fewer resources available for recovering from training. Training through an illness isn’t usually the best thing to try and do.

PAIN: You’re sore or nursing an injury
Whether you’re sore from overworked muscles or an injury, your body needs more energy to put toward repair, lengthening total recovery time. You can increase the damage from an injury or put muscles and joints at risk if training when muscles are overtired, too tight or weak. If you need advice, talk to someone with the knowledge that can help you over such a problem.

PERFORMANCE: Your workout went poorly
This is a subjective measure of workout quality, not quantity nor intensity. If you felt great on yesterday’s run, you’d evaluate that as good. If you felt sluggish on that same run, you’d count it as poor. Tracking workout quality—multiple poor scores in a row—is one of the easiest ways to identify the need for more recovery. Be honest with yourself, kidding yourself you worked hard will not benefit you at all.

As an bonus, here are a couple of little tips that you can use to help with the eating healthy habits we talk about with our clients, that can help change your eating habits.

BYPASS PEANUTS: Do not put it as snacks on the tables in the house; especially if the bowls are very large. As many nuts are, the more you are tempted to eat. If you really cannot abstain from it, you have an alternative: pistachios. 3 handfuls of peanuts have 500 calories, while pistachios have only 200 calories.

DO NOT EAT IN FRONT OF THE TV: Eat normally, on the table, and then run or walk out a half an hour once your food has settled. Thus cut 500 calories at each meal. In front of the TV people eat more than at the table.

STOP DRINKING FANCY COFFEE: If you are a coffee drinker, and especially if you like coffee that looks good, than there is a problem. A great cup of coffee with cream, syrups and other additions has much more than 500 calories. If replacing your fancy coffee with an espresso, you save over 600 calories.

SLEEP 8 HOURS A DAY: If you sleep more, you have less time to eat. Studies show that those who sleep 5 hours per night, eat about 1000 calories more. If you wake up early you get hungry faster, and eat several times more.

EAT FOOD THAT MAKES YOU FEEL FULL: For example boil two eggs for breakfast and for dinner eat a bowl of soup. Adding more protein and good fats to your meals will make you feel fuller for longer, therefore you can save more than 500 calories per day.

So you read food labels when you go shopping and think you make all the good choices?? You just think counting calories is the best way of changing your weight, yet keep hitting roadblocks on the journey?? Here’s a great article that shows just how complicated the nutrition part of health really is.

Why most food labels are wrong about calories

(Authors: Richard Wrangham & Rachel Carmody)

OK you can trust this food label. But calories? Forget it.

Food labels seem to provide all the information a thoughtful consumer needs, so counting calories should be simple. But things get tricky because food labels tell only half the story.

A calorie is a measure of usable energy. Food labels say how many calories a food contains. But what they don’t say is that how many calories you actually get out of your food depends on how highly processed it is.

Raw versus cooked – they look different and that’s not all.
Processed food makes you fatter

Food-processing includes cooking, blending and mashing, or using refined instead of unrefined flour. It can be done by the food industry before you buy, or in your home when you prepare a meal. Its effects can be big. If you eat your food raw, you will tend to lose weight. If you eat the same food cooked, you will tend to gain weight. Same calories, different outcome.

For our ancestors, it could have meant the difference between life and death. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when early humans learned to cook they were able to access more energy in whatever they ate. The extra energy allowed them to develop big brains, have babies faster and travel more efficiently. Without cooking, we would not be human.

Potatoes – raw, then cut, then cooked, then mashed. Such processing implies more calories for your bottom-line.

More processed foods are digested more completely

Animal experiments show that processing affects calorie gain whether the energy source is carbohydrate, protein or lipid (fats and oils). In every case, more processed foods give an eater more energy. Take carbohydrates, which provide more than half of the world’s calories. Their energy is often packaged in starch grains, dense packets of glucose that are digested mainly in your small intestine. If you eat a starchy food raw, up to half the starch grains pass through the small intestine entirely undigested. Your body gets two-thirds or less of the total calories available in the food. The rest might be used by bacteria in your colon, or might even be passed out whole.

Even among cooked foods, digestibility varies. Starch becomes more resistant to digestion when it is allowed to cool and sit after being cooked, because it crystallizes into structures that digestive enzymes cannot easily break down. So stale foods like day-old cooked spaghetti, or cold toast, will give you fewer calories than the same foods eaten piping hot, even though technically they contain the same amount of stored energy.

Softer foods are calorie-saving

Highly processed foods are not only more digestible; they tend to be softer, requiring the body to expend less energy during digestion. Researchers fed rats two kinds of laboratory chow. One kind was solid pellets, the type normally given to lab animals. The other differed only by containing more air: they were like puffed breakfast cereal. Rats eating the solid and puffed pellets ate the same weight of food and the same number of counted calories and they exercised the same amount as each other. But the rats eating the puffed pellets grew heavier and had 30% more body fat than their counterparts eating regular chow.

The reason why the puffed-pellet-eaters gained more energy is that their guts didn’t have to work so hard: puffed pellets take less physical effort to break down. When rats eat, their body temperature rises due to the work of digestion. A meal of puffed pellets leads to less rise in body temperature than the same meal of solid pellets. Because the puffed pellets require less energy to digest, they lead to greater weight gain and more fat.

Our bodies work the same way. They do less work when eating foods that have been softened by cooking, mashed or aerated. Think about that when you sit down to a holiday meal or dine in a fine restaurant. Our favourite foods have been so lovingly prepared that they melt in the mouth and slide down our throats with barely any need for chewing. No wonder we adore them. Our preference is nature’s way of keeping as much as possible of these precious calories.

Whole wheat vs white bread: less-processed is better for slimming down.

Why food labels don’t tell the full story

Unfortunately, of course, in today’s overfed and under-exercised populations nature’s way is not the best way. If we want to lose weight we should challenge our instinctive desires. We should reject soft white bread in favour of rough whole wheat breads, processed cheese in favour of natural cheese, cooked vegetables in favour of raw vegetables. And to do so would be much easier if our food labels gave us some advice about how many calories we would save by eating less-processed food. So why are our nutritionist advisers mute on the topic?

For decades there have been calls by distinguished committees and institutions to reform our calorie-counting system. But the calls for change have failed. The problem is a shortage of information. Researchers find it hard to predict precisely how many extra calories will be gained when our food is more highly processed. By contrast, they find it easy to show that if a food is digested completely, it will yield a specific number of calories.

Our food labelling therefore faces a choice between two systems, neither of which is satisfactory. The first gives a precise number of calories but takes no account of the known effects of food-processing, and therefore mis-measures what our bodies are actually harvesting from the food. The second would take account of food-processing, but without any precise numbers.

Faced by this difficult choice, every country has opted to ignore the effect of processing and the result is that consumers are confused. Labels provide a number that likely overestimates the calories available in unprocessed foods. Food labels ignore the costs of the digestive process – losses to bacteria and energy spent digesting. The costs are lower for processed items, so the amount of overestimation on their labels is less.

Food labels seem so specific, but they’re not telling the whole story.

Time for a change?

Given the importance of counting calories correctly, it’s time to re-open the discussion. One idea would develop a “traffic-light” system on food labels, alerting consumers to foods that are highly processed (red dots), lightly processed (green dots) or in-between (amber dots).

Public health demands more education on the effects of how we prepare our food on our individual weight gain. Calorie-counting is too important to allow a system that is clearly limited to be the best on offer. We need a major scientific effort to produce adequate numbers on the effects of food-processing.

Don’t Be a Slave to the Scale

Does the following story sound vaguely familiar to any of you? You wake up and look in the mirror. You are delighted to find that your physique is looking very good. Your see that your body is leaning out nicely and your muscles are shaping up well. You put your workout attire on and pleasantly discover that the clothes are fitting you very well – snug in all the right places and loose where it matters. You hit the gym and kick some serious butt, setting strength records in multiple exercises. A couple of gym members pay you compliments, informing you that you are looking fantastic. Everything is going great, and your day is off to an excellent start. Then, you step on the scale, and all of your glee comes to a screeching halt. You’ve gained a few pounds, and knowing this absolutely ruins your day.

In the past, I have heard (mainly female) clients say similar things. After telling them how great they looked or how well they’re doing, they mentioned that although they’re happy with their strength gains and physique improvements, they’ve packed on a few pounds since they started training and are therefore disappointed and discouraged with their training.

Some people don’t care so much about what the scale says – they’re more influenced by other parameters such as how they look in the mirror, how their clothes feel, what the body fat results show. However, others are laser-focused on scale weight. Anecdotally, this scenario applies to a higher percentage of women than men, but some men will certainly be able to relate. It seems that many individuals have a target weight that they’re aspiring to reach, and they just cannot be content knowing that the scale isn’t congruent with this ideal notion (or moving toward this ideal notion), regardless of whether other forms of feedback appear to be promising.

Perhaps this number represents the body weight that the individual was at when they felt they looked their all-time best (an example being wedding day). Or maybe the number represents the body weight of their favourite celebrity, model, or athlete. Nevertheless, allow me to explain you why you might indeed gain bodyweight following resistance training, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s All About the Diet
Let’s start with the obvious: when you start lifting weights, you can either lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight. How your body responds to strength training is largely influenced by your diet. If you’re eating like a bird, you’ll lose weight, and if you’re eating like a horse, you’ll gain weight. However, lifting weights will cause you to retain more muscle while you lose weight on a caloric deficit, and it will cause you to build more muscle while you gain weight on a caloric surplus. If you want to lose weight but find yourself gaining weight, then you’re eating too much. If you want to gain weight but find yourself losing weight, then you’re not eating enough. Got it? Good! Let’s move on.

Click on the picture and look at women; each of these athletes exercise a lot, but when adjusting for height, we find that the smaller women consume much less calories than the larger women.

Intracellular Water Gain: Pumping Up the Muscles
What if we said that we possessed a syringe filled with a special fluid that when injected into the muscles, would immediately improve their body shape? This special fluid would have no negative side effects and is legal. Would you consider using it? Luckily, that’s not necessary. There is indeed a special fluid that does precisely this, and its name is water. But instead of injecting water into the muscles, all you have to do is lift weights. This causes intracellular water gain (the body’s reaction to strength training).
Yes I know most of our female readers seeing the term “water gain” and associating it with bloating, such as that experienced during pre-menstruation. However, the location of water storage largely determines whether the water retention positively or negatively impacts the physique – not all water retention is equal. There is no doubt that bloating, characterised by increases in extracellular water storage, negatively alters appearance. However, the opposite is true with regards to intracellular water storage.
Perhaps you’ve heard of bodybuilders describing how their muscles were flat. Much of what they do during the peaking phase prior to competition is designed to make the muscles appear full and the rest of the body appear dry. This is achieved by directing some of the body’s water content out of the interstitial space and into the muscle cells, which greatly enhances appearance. But this doesn’t just apply to bodybuilders. Think about the look of your favourite athletes – their muscles are probably full and shapely. As it turns out, this enhanced shape isn’t just attributable to increased muscle proteins; increased water also influences the size and shape of your muscles.

Here’s how it works. Your body contains a lot of water. Males possess a range of 38.5 – 73.5% water content, with an average water content of 58.3%, whereas females possess a range of 27.4 – 70.9% water content, with an average water content of 48.5%. So in general, humans are around 50% water.
Immediately following a strength training workout, your muscles will acutely retain water. In fact, 4 and 52 hours following a workout, your muscles will store 7 and 8% more water, respectively, and this increased water storage is associated with a 13 and 16% increase in cross sectional area, respectively. This is in line with longitudinal research which shows that total body training performed 3 times per week for 16 weeks leads to 7.5% and 7.6% increases in total body water content for men and women, respectively. Furthermore, athletes that regularly perform resistance training tend to have lower densities of fat-free mass due to the increased water storage in their muscles. What’s fascinating is that extracellular water content doesn’t increase; only intracellular water content does, by 8.2% for men and 11.0% for women, respectively. The concurrent increases in skeletal muscle mass were 4.2 and 3.9% in men and women, respectively.

How is this so? The increased water storage is highly related to increased muscle glycogen. Following 5 months of heavy resistance training, muscle glycogen increases by 66%. It is thought that every gram of glycogen stored in the muscles will bring along 2.7 grams of water along with it, with other estimates as high as 3-4 grams. Interestingly, after just 3 days on a very low carbohydrate diet, glycogen stores in the body can decrease to 1/3rd of their initial values, and following this up with a high carbohydrate diet will cause these same individuals’ glycogen levels to rise by a factor of 6, essentially doubling their initial values. These fluctuating glycogen levels create the illusion of rapid fat loss and regain, but it’s really mostly water level fluctuation. And though most estimates put total body glycogen levels at approximately 400 grams, some individuals possess over 1,000 grams of glycogen in their bodies. This information helps provide clarity as to why individuals subjected to ketogenic very low calorie diets tend to lose 4.5kg’s in just 4 days, with the top responder losing 8kg’s (in other words; the effects of ‘crash diets’)

Strength Training Makes You Denser, Up to a Point
Let’s put this into perspective. Let’s say a 65kg woman undergoes a 3-month resistance training regimen. During this time, her weight stays the same; she doesn’t lose any weight or gain any weight. But she looks markedly different in the mirror. How can this be? If she trained properly, she would have likely gained a few pounds of muscle mass, she would be storing more water in her muscles due to the increased glycogen, she would have lost several pounds of fat, and other small changes will have taken place such as increased bone density. Powerlifters tend to have the highest bone densities ever recorded, but this would be a minor factor in this example. Maybe she lost 3kg’s of fat, gained 1.5kg’s of muscle, and is storing 1.5kg’s more water in her muscles. This will markedly influence aesthetics, despite zero change in body weight.

When you strength train, weight tends to be subtracted from “bad” areas and added to “good” areas, and this shift in body composition makes a huge positive difference in your physique. And since muscle is 18% more dense than fat, improving body composition will decrease your overall volume. Since density equals mass divided by volume, you can see that increasing density without increasing mass can only be achieved by decreasing volume. Check out this 6 year progression of a female’s body shape during training, you’ll note that after just over a year, her weight didn’t change drastically, but she got smaller in overall size due to body re-compositioning.

Again, click on the picture and see what is the body shape you want without looking at the weight.

What About Exercise and Hunger Hormones – Why Am I So Darn Hungry All the Time?
If you’ve ever dieted down while undergoing resistance training and cardio, then you know how difficult it is to keep losing weight. If you’ve lifted weights competitively (as a powerlifter, weightlifter, or strongman) for any number of years, then you know how hard it is to stay a certain weight and avoid going up a weight class. But what does the research say about this? There’s a TON of intriguing research on body weight set point theory. The body seems to have a set range of weight or set range of body fat percentage that it wants to remain at, and the internal mechanism is located in the brain, and the more weight or fat you lose, the harder it is to maintain that new weight or body fat percentage.

With regards to appetite hormone effects of exercise, there really isn’t much to go by since the vast majority of the research is short term in nature. For example, 2 days of intensive resistance training has been shown to significantly decrease leptin and ghrelin levels. Twelve weeks of exercise showed that aerobics were more effective than strength training at satisfying hunger. Aerobic and resistance training suppress hunger for 1-2 hours after the training session, but this might be the case with men more so than women. Moderate and high intensity exercise appears to effect hunger hormones similarly. On a simple level that’s about all we know as yet; there is yet to be a high quality long term trial conducted on hunger hormones following resistance versus aerobic training.

Should We Even Weigh Ourselves?
The answer to this question is yes, you should weigh yourself. Well, you should as long as it doesn’t make you crazy!! Research overwhelmingly shows that daily self-weighing can be good for weight loss; that breaks in this routine can lead to increased risks of weight gain. However, the scale is just one indicator that on its own fails to capture the entire picture and you should pick one that both suits your goal and that you’re happy measuring yourself by.
What Indicators Should We Pay Attention To?
You should rely on a variety of indicators of fitness progress, including:
• scale weight
• body fat levels
• measurements
• strength levels
• how clothes fit
• progress pictures
• compliments from others
• how fit and conditioned you feel
• Health measures such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, etc.

I have dealt with clients that turn up to the gym frustrated at the scale reading when looking at their weight, then a few days later with a huge smile on her face. They have put a pair of once snug work pants on and found that there was an inch and a half gap in the waist area; they have looked at some progress pictures and could clearly see major improvements in their physique. A husband, friends, and co-workers are complimenting them and so on; it is important not to just use the scales!!

Conclusion
Self-weighing is a good idea, as long as it doesn’t cause you to feel loco en la cabeza. But if you only rely on the scale to inform you of your progress, you will be missing the forest for the trees, getting so caught up in the minutia that you fail to see the big picture. Everybody knows that resistance training does a body good and makes the body look better. Lifting weights will cause you to lean out, become denser, and lose overall volume. It will also cause your muscles to tome and swell so they have the coveted athletic look that so many desire. This muscular swelling is associated with some weight gain, so don’t sweat it if you gain a few pounds when you begin training. It’s caused by increased muscle glycogen storage and subsequent increased water storage.

HOW MUCH SLEEP IS ENOUGH?

Animal studies suggest that sleep is as vital as food for survival. Rats, for example, normally live 2–3 years, but they live only 5 weeks if they are deprived of REM sleep and only 2–3 weeks if they are deprived of all sleep stages—a timeframe similar to death due to starvation. But how much sleep do humans need? To help answer that question, scientists look at how much people sleep when unrestricted, the average amount of sleep among various age groups, and the amount of sleep that studies reveal is necessary to function at your best.

When healthy adults are given unlimited opportunity to sleep, they sleep on average between 8 and 8.5 hours a night. But sleep needs vary from person to person. Some people appear to need only about 7 hours to avoid problem sleepiness whereas others need 9 or more hours of sleep. Sleep needs also change throughout the lifecycle. New-borns sleep between 16 and 18 hours a day, and children in preschool sleep between 10 and 12 hours a day. School aged children and adolescents need at least 9 hours of sleep a night. The hormonal influences of puberty tend to shift adolescents’ biological clocks. As a result, teenagers are more likely to go to bed later than younger children and adults, and they tend to want to sleep later in the morning. This sleep–wake rhythm is contrary to the early-morning start times of many high schools and helps explain why most teenagers get an average of only 7–7.5 hours of sleep a night.

As people get older, the pattern of sleep also changes—especially the amount of time spent in the deep sleep stages. Children spend more time than adults in these sleep stages. This explains why children can sleep through loud noises and why they might not wake up when they are moved from the car to their beds. During adolescence, a big drop occurs in the amount of time spent in deep sleep, which is replaced by lighter, stage 2 sleep. Between young adulthood and midlife, the percentage of deep sleep falls again— from less than 20 percent to less than 5 percent, one study suggests— and is replaced with lighter sleep (stages 1 and 2). From midlife through late life, people’s sleep has more interruptions by wakefulness during the night. This disruption causes older persons to lose more and more of stages 1 and 2 non-REM sleep as well as REM sleep. Many older people complain of difficulty falling asleep, early morning awakenings, frequent and long awakenings during the night, daytime sleepiness, and a lack of refreshing sleep. Many sleep problems, however, are not a natural aspect of sleep in the elderly. Because older people are more likely to have many illnesses that can disrupt sleep, their sleep complaints often may be due, in part, to illnesses or the medications used to treat them. In fact, one study found that the prevalence of sleep problems is very low in healthy older adults.

Other causes of some of older adults’ sleep complaints are sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and other sleep disorders that become more common with age. Also, older people are more likely to have their sleep disrupted by the need to urinate during the night. Some evidence shows that the biological clock shifts in older people, so they are more apt to go to sleep earlier at night and wake up earlier in the morning. No evidence indicates that older people can get by with less sleep than younger people.

Poor sleep in older people is linked to excessive daytime sleepiness, attention and memory problems, depressed mood, and overuse of sleeping pills. Despite variations in sleep quantity and quality, both related to age and between individuals, studies suggest that the optimal amount of sleep needed to perform adequately, avoid a sleep debt, and not have problem sleepiness during the day is about 7–8 hours for adults and 9 or more hours for school-aged children and adolescents. Similar amounts seem to be necessary to avoid further increasing the risk of developing obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disorders.

Quality of sleep is as important as quantity. People whose sleep is frequently interrupted or cut short may not get enough of both non- REM sleep and REM sleep. Both types of sleep appear to be crucial for learning and memory—and perhaps for all the other restorative benefits of healthy sleep, including the growth and repair of cells. Many people try to make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. But if you have lost too much sleep, sleeping in on the weekend does not completely erase your sleep debt. Certainly, sleeping more at the end of the week does not make up for the hampered performance you most likely had at the beginning of or during that week. Just one night of inadequate sleep can adversely affect your functioning and mood during at least the next day.

Daytime naps are another strategy some people use to make up for lost sleep during the night. Some evidence shows that short naps (up to an hour) can make up, at least partially, for the sleep missed on the previous night and improve alertness, mood, and work performance. But naps don’t substitute for a good night’s sleep. One study found that a daytime nap after a lack of sleep at night did not fully restore levels of blood sugar to the pattern seen with adequate night time sleep. If a nap lasts longer than 1 hour, you may have a hard time waking up fully. In addition, late afternoon naps can make falling asleep at night more difficult.

Key messages from this are that healthier people heave a better sleep pattern and are mentally and physically in better shape following a good nights’ sleep. Also, getting a good nights’ sleep allows your body to recover / repair itself so that you can function better the next day, something you will need as part of your health routine following your daily workout.

Recently we have looked at various lifestyle changes we can use to help us on our healthy fitness journey and, today we are just going to sum up some of the main points covering nutrition and training.

The Science of Cardio< How It Works
Forget everything you currently believe about cardio work. Forget keeping your heart rate in some ‘fat burning zone’. Forget plodding along with the vague goal of increasing the distance you can plod. Instead of training like a plow-horse, start training like a thoroughbred.
You’ll only work at the same effort level for an extended period of time, as you would with traditional cardio exercise on recovery days. But you’re going to take the time you typically spend on cardio and develop the ability to perform at a more intense level. You’ll improve your energy levels, gaining physical strength and stamina without investing additional time.

You don’t have to head to the track and train like a middle-distance runner, (although it’s not a bad place to do your work.) For convenience, you’ll probably want to work on a stationary bike, cross trainer, or treadmill at the gym. An outdoor alternative would be to find a hill or stairwell somewhere nearby. If you’re city bound, parking garages are perfect for uphill running; sprint up the ramps and walk down.

The bottom line: Instead of slow, plodding workouts, effective cardio workouts will have your muscles, nervous system, and hormones acting together into efficient movement patterns that help your body work as efficiently as possible.

Building Your Energy Systems

There are three different energy systems that are important for you to understand and know how they work:

1. Lactate threshold

– This is your capacity to do high-intensity work for up to 3 minutes. The part of your training program is a form of interval training in which you will alternate between periods of intense exercise with less strenuous periods.

2. Lactate power

– This is your body’s ability to do high-level work for periods of up to 12 seconds.

3. Aerobic system

– The ability to work beyond 3 minutes and help you recover from your bouts with the lactate threshold. For instance, if you’re sprinting up hills and walking down, you’re using the lactate system on the way up and the aerobic system on the way down. In this case, the aerobic system enhances your recovery from these intense bursts of energy.

The 3 Heart Rate Zones

You’ll work within three heart-rate “zones.” To calculate your maximum heart rate, begin by subtracting your age from 220 (this isn’t exact but will give you a good measure of where you’re working). For example, if you are 40 years old, your maximum heart rate is 180. (It may actually be higher than that, but this is a close enough estimate to allow for productive workouts.) Multiply that rate by 60 and 70 percent for zone 1. Multiply it by 71 and 80 percent to determine zone 2, and multiply by 81 and 90 percent to determine zone 3.

Zone 1 Lower Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 60%

Zone 1 Upper Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 70%

Zone 2 Lower Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 71%

Zone 2 Upper Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 80%

Zone 3 Lower Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 81%

Zone 3 Upper Limit = (220 – Your Age) × 90%

These are general guidelines that will tie in with the three training zones.

Age Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3

20 120 to 140 142 to 160 162 to 180

25 117 to 137 138 to 156 158 to 176

30 114 to 133 135 to 152 154 to 171

35 111 to 129 131 to 148 149 to 167

40 108 to 126 127 to 144 145 to 162

45 105 to 122 124 to 140 141 to 158

50 102 to 119 121 to 136 138 to 153

55 99 to 116 117 to 132 134 to 150

60 96 to 112 114 to 128 130 to 146

Workout Phases:

Zone 1

Zone 1 focuses on steady-state aerobic work. Aerobic simply means that your body will use oxygen to provide a steady and consistent, low level of energy for a long time, without building up any waste products in the body that hinder performance. Think of it as a low-horsepower, highly fuel-efficient, four-cylinder engine that can run all day but does not generate a whole lot of power. A good rule of thumb for Zone 1 is that you should be able to carry on a conversation when you are in the aerobic zone. Some of the best activities for this are:

Outdoors: Brisk walking, walking up hills, biking, swimming, rowing

Indoors: Biking, treadmill climbing/walking, elliptical trainer

Using the aerobic zone during this level will improve your cardiovascular system and prepare your muscles for the greater speeds of Zones 2 & 3. This lower-level work will let your movement patterns, muscles and joints adapt and prepare for the more intense training coming in these next phases.

When you get into Zones 2 & 3, you’ll perform interval training, where there will be bouts of harder effort mixed with easier-effort periods to give your body time to recover. You’ll use the lower-intensity Zone 1 aerobic work in these higher Zones as a recovery tool.

Interval training increases your body’s release of positive hormones, which builds lean body mass and signals your body to dump fat. At the same time, it keeps your heart rate from dropping out of the aerobic zone.

Zone 2

Zone 2 will introduce interval training by mixing moderate intensity with bouts of easy-intensity aerobic work to allow you to catch your breath and recover from the slightly more intense intervals.
You will normally find that this work is a mixture of work and rest activities; we call this the work-to-rest ratio. The greater the rest, the higher quality the work should be. The lower the ratio—for instance, 1 second of rest per 1 second of work (1:1)—the bigger the challenge, since the body has less time to recover. That increases your capacity to do work.

You’ll know you’ve reached Zone 2 moderate intensity if you would find it difficult to carry on a conversation. You could, but you wouldn’t be able to say much more than a couple of words at a time. Some of the best activities for this level are:

Outdoors: Running-to-jogging/walking, jogging-to-walking

Indoors: Bike, elliptical trainer. treadmill, stair climbers

Level 3

I know I know, its a pain when your trainer asks you for your training card and you haven’t kept it up to date. But why do they do this? surely they can remember what I did last time?….. (Actually it’s because they have nothing better to do!!) There are many benefits for you to keep track of what your are doing on your fitness journey and we are going to cover the main points in this weeks blog.

Use an Exercise Training Card to get the most out of your workout.

A plan or road map is a great tool to have when you’re setting out on a long trip. It helps point you in the direction you want to go and can be a lifesaver when you’ve strayed off course. That’s why we have all of our clients on a specific plan that’s designed just for them. An exercise training plan can provide the same help as a road map when you embark on an exercise program. In many ways, it’s a lot more informative because it’s a daily record of your journey to your fitness goals. So let’s take a look at how to get the most benefit from your workout log.

1. Record the Basics
Record the date, start and end times, body parts trained for any strength work and record information about your cardio workouts.

2. It’s more than just sets and reps

For a strength training log you’ll certainly want to record the number of sets and reps you perform for each lifting exercise. Make sure you also record all warm up and mobility exercises as this will help you prevent injury and may also help you and your trainer know how to progress each exercise. A training diary takes away the guesswork.

Also be sure to indicate if you use any special training requirements or techniques such as forced reps, negatives or super sets. A training diary is a great way to uncover if any of these techniques actually work for you or if they’re just making you over trained. Also, recording the settings on exercise machines such as seat height and other adjustments can save you a lot of time during your workouts.

3. Details Matter
Details do make a difference! In the notes area of your diary page, be sure to record how you’re feeling at the start of your workout. Are you tired or are you ready to tear things up in the weight room? Do your muscles pump up quickly as your workout progresses or is the exercise causing any discomfort. Knowing how an exercise feels can help you as you may not be getting the most from the movement if you can’t remember what your trainer told you.

4. Don’t forget about nutrition
The other half of the fitness equation is diet. It’s vital that you record everything that you eat and drink throughout the day. We have more information on this later in the article.

5. Record vital measurements
Depending on your goal, you need to record how you are progressing; measure where you are starting from, (it doesn’t matter what this reads as its Day 1 on your journey). Pick a measurement you are comfortable with and that is relevant to your goal. Putting a tape measure to your neck, upper arms, chest, waist, thighs, and calves is a great way to track your weight training progress; measuring body fat% is a good tool for those wanting to become leaner and more athletic looking.

6. Review your log before each workout
Before you begin your workout, take a look back to the last time you trained the same body parts. Take assessment of the exercises, weight and reps you did for each exercise. This is the time to mentally challenge yourself to get an extra bit of weight or increase the cardio by 5%.

7. Using the information
Ever felt like you’re not making progress and each workout is still hard? look back over your record to see what kind of progress you’ve made. Have you been able to increase the weights for these lifts on a steady basis or have you hit a sticking point and are just doing the same thing?
This is a good time to look for any correlations. Did your body weight begin to drop off around the time you hit the sticking point? Same for the nutrition log and make sure you’re staying on track with your diet.

Benefits of Keeping a Food Diary for Weight Loss

Taking the time to record your food and drink intake may seem like a lot of hard work, but it is one of the most effective tools to assist with weight loss. Here are some of the benefits of keeping a food diary.

• You can use it to help you determine the volume and composition of your current eating habits.
• Food diaries force you to think consciously about what you are eating, and keeps you focused on your weight loss program.
• A food diary will help you visualise what you eat. When your food intake is written down, areas where your diet goes wrong may become more obvious.
• It helps keep you honest too. It does not work if you ‘forget’ some items or pretend that certain calories don’t count.
• The food diary can serve as a reminder about nutrition goals such as drinking enough water, or having the right number of serves of fruit, veggies, dairy, protein, cereals/grains and good fats each day.
• If you are keeping a long term food diary, you can look back over the records and see periods where things went right or wrong. You may start to see some patterns emerge regarding why you are eating when you do, increasing awareness and assisting behaviour change.

Maintaining an exercise and food diary is a little extra work, but it’s a commitment to your training program that will pay big dividends by keeping you on the road to training success!

Busting the Great Myths of Fat Burning

We’ve all heard them: eat this food, must do this exercise, have to try this new class because they ALL burn that body fat!! Here’s a great article that put’s it all into simple terms showing how hard, more intense exercise trumps plodding along when we want to change ourselves.

(By Tony Ryan and Martica Heaner from Cross-Training For Dummies)
Your body burns either fat or carbs depending on the intensity of your activity. But when it comes to losing weight, calories are calories. You burn fat even when you’re in couch-potato mode. Yet, a lot of misunderstanding prevails.
Get ready to break down some of the myths people have about burning fat:

Myth: The body completely shuts off one fuel source when it turns on the other.
The Truth: What has often been misunderstood by both exercisers and exercise instructors alike is that the body relies on both fat and carbs for energy all the time, albeit in different ratios. In fact, as you sit here reading, you may be burning about 50-60 percent fat and 50-40 percent carbohydrates.
You’re not using much of either, however, because the amount of calories you need probably amounts to about one or two calories a minute. If you were to get up and start jogging in place, your body would need to supply you with some quick energy to do so, so the metabolism ratio might shift to drawing upon more carbohydrates, say 70 percent, and less fat, say 30 percent.
If you were to continue jogging, then, in order to preserve the carbs (which can run out since you have limited stores in the body), your body would gradually shift its metabolism ratio again to say, 60 percent fat and 40 percent carbohydrates. From an energy efficiency point of view, it pays to be fit. The endurance athlete would be able to make the shift sooner, and his fat-burning percentage might be 65-75 percent.
However, in practical terms this is purely techno-talk, and these ratios don’t make a big difference when it comes to losing weight and decreasing your body fat. For the most part, athletes are often leaner not because they might rely on slightly more fat for fuel, but because they practice their sport two to three, or more, hours a day — this burns a lot of calories.
If you had the time, energy, and fitness level to work out three hours a day, being overweight would probably not be an issue. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than your body consumes and uses every day. Exercise is one main way to burn a lot of calories. But when it comes to weight loss, what matters is how many calories you burn, not so much whether they are fat or carbohydrate calories.

Myth: Exercise done at a low intensity, such as walking, is better at fat burning than other high-intensity activities, like running or cardio activities where you push yourself very hard.
The Truth: In a strict scientific sense, these claims are true because working at a lower intensity requires less quick energy and a higher percentage of fat is burned. But you’ll also burn fewer calories than you would if, for the same amount of time, you work out at a harder intensity (running versus walking). If you’re trying to lose weight, even though a higher percentage of fat is being used, a lower total amount of fat is lost.
Whether increased fat burning will result in actual weight loss is dependent upon several variables, including the total calories burned (which include both fat and carbohydrate calories) and the total fat calories burned. If you do work at a low intensity, you need to increase the time spent exercising to burn more calories.
What matters most is the total number of calories burned. If you burned 250 calories every day from a short, fast jog, you’d see a bigger difference in weight and fat loss than if you walked every day for the same amount of time.
The number of fat calories you burn isn’t that important, because even if you burn a lot of carb calories, these need to be replaced both by the carbs you eat in your diet and also within your body. Your fat stores will be broken down and transformed into carbohydrates when you need fuel. Even if you’re burning lots of carb calories and less fat calories through exercise, your fat still inevitably gets used.

It boils — not burns — down to this: During the same amount of time you don’t use more calories at lower exercise intensities. If you’re trying to lose weight and you have only 30 minutes to work out, you would burn fewer calories walking at a moderate pace compared to walking at a fast pace.
Working out at higher intensities may cause you to burn a lower percentage of fat, but since you burn more total calories, you still use more fat calories.
Low- to moderate-intensity exercise can burn a significant number of calories over a period of time. If you aren’t fit enough to push yourself to work at a high intensity, or you have a physical weakness that prevents you from doing so, you can still burn a lot of calories by doing low-intensity workouts for a longer period of time.

Myth: Running, cycling, or other cardio activities are more fat- burning once you’ve been doing them for more than 15 or 20 minutes.
The Truth: Technically, once you’ve been exercising for 15 or 20 minutes, your body has made the shift to using a higher percentage of fat for fuel. But again, if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s about the total number of calories burned, not necessarily the fuel source.
For example, say that at rest you burn up to 60 percent fat; when you enter the initial phases of intense exercise, the ratio changes. You may now burn only 30 percent fat because your body is using quick-energy carbohydrates. Once the exercise is sustained, the body switches back to using a higher percentage of fat to fuel the movement (up to 75 percent fat). In this aerobic phase of exercise, a higher percentage of fat is being used for energy. But if you aren’t working out for a very long period, you may still burn more total calories and, therefore, more fat calories working out harder.

Put another way, if burning as many calories as you can is the best way to lose weight, even a dummy can figure out which activity of the following is going to give the best results (answer: jogging and sprinting), even though their fat-burning quota is on the low end of the ratio. Working out performing higher intensity exercises will benefit you more if you are trying to change your body shape and weight; resistance training (weights) will push up the intensity of most exercises that’s why we use them in all of our workouts. However, you workout needs to be tailored to what you want to do AND what you are capable of doing; it’s not just a case of getting flogged in a session and thinking that will work.