Fitness Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Personal Training

08 Mar

Fat, A Quick, Need To Know Guide

Fat, The Truth

I heard some stupid, annoying ad on the radio yesterday about some butter now being made lower in saturated fat. The people in the ad joked about how it’ll keep them alive longer or some rubbish as if saturated fat instantly made everyone obese and clogged up our arteries. Seriously, this type of marketing preys on the average person and keeps them in the dark to what the truth about fat actually is. That’s where I come in. Unfortunately my message won’t be heard by the majority of people out there but hopefully those of you who read the blog will get some help and spread the word.

Good and Bad Fats

Let’s start off with the good guys. First up is monounsaturated fat. This type of fat is found in avocados, pistachios, almonds, walnuts and cashews as well as in olive oil. It helps to lower bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol. Win win!

Polyunsaturated fats also fight bad cholesterol. It can be found in foods like salmon, fish oil, sunflower oil, seeds and soy. This fat contains Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids which are largely processed out of food nowadays. The ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 in a western diet is around 1:15. It should be much closer to 1:1. We’re way off and this is why eating oily fish like salmon and tuna is a great idea or taking a fish oil supplement.

Both the mono and polyunsaturated fats are our good guys. Where the media goes crazy is with saturated fat.

Saturated fat isn’t as good as the two I’ve mentioned already but it definitely doesn’t need to be held in such a poor regard. The haters of saturated fat point to studies saying it gives people heart disease. These studies were done in the 70’s and 80’s on people who didn’t exercise at all and anything taken to excess will obviously look bad. Saturated fat also has been shown to increase cholesterol in the blood stream. Before you shoot me down saying that’s awful, it’s really not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. What you haven’t been told is cholesterol also acts as an antioxidant against dangerous free radicals in our blood and is needed for the production of hormones which help fight against heart disease. Cholesterol rises when we eat too many bad fats, unhealthy foods and large amounts of sugar to fight these substances. The saturated fat isn’t the problem it’s the rest of a person’s crappy diet that is. Foods containing saturated fat include dairy, eggs, red meat and some seafood. It’s not exactly a good fat but if you eat reasonable amounts of those foods you’re absolutely fine! Eat the ones you like and avoid the ones you don’t.

And lastly we have trans fats. This fat is most definitely the WORST fat. It’s found in deep fried foods, crisps (potato chips to any North Americans reading), pie crust, margarine, frosting, microwave popcorn, biscuits, cakes and crackers to name a few.

There are traces of trans fats found in some meats and other food which are naturally occurring but for the most part but they are generally man made in the examples above.

They’re made by a chemical process called partial hydrogenation where liquid vegetable oil (a decent monounsaturated fat) is stuffed with hydrogen atoms and converted into a solid fat (and over to the dark side) It’s perfect for the food industry with a high melting point, smooth texture and it can be reused over and over again in deep fat frying. If your food is pre-packaged, it probably has a fair amount of trans fat. If you’re serious about your goals you’ll limit (or eliminate) the consumption of this fat.

So there you have a quick need to know guide on fats. Hopefully you’ll eat some more of the good guys, eat less of the trans fat and you’ll hit the next idiot with some knowledge who starts talking rubbish about saturated fat.

If you’d like me to write about something you’re unsure of or would like more info on a particular topic, leave a comment on our Facebook page after I post this or email me using the address on the right side of this page. Knowledge is power.

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03 Mar

Shape Up For Summer Part 2

Summer

Part 2 is here and it includes some more strategies you can implement right away to get you closer to summer body shape. There’s also one advanced strategy that can be done if everything else is adhered to perfectly.

Do a mix of all training types, resistance, cardio and recovery.

Resistance training or strength training helps to build and maintain muscle, burn calories and improve your glucose tolerance. Cardio exercise improves the health of your heart, burns a lot of calories and can improve recovery by getting blood pumped around the body. If you’re tired of doing your cardio in the gym, try to get outside nearer to Summer time for a jog, cycle or some other outdoor activities. Recovery work, including foam rolling, walking or yoga helps to keep our muscles from getting tight, loosens us up and can help flexibility. It also helps to relieve stress; this can be very beneficial as the stress hormone cortisol really slows fat loss.

Increase non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)

Don’t worry about the term, all it means is increasing your calorie burn outside of your actual fitness training. Try to take more stairs rather than the lift, park further away from a building you’re going to rather than parking right outside, try a stand up desk or a small walk during lunch etc. This will be much easier as we get closer to Summer as the weather gets better (hopefully!) All of these add up if done consistently.

Get more quality sleep

Sleep is often an overlooked part of someone’s training or fat loss plan. With a lack of sleep that stress hormone cortisol is higher during the day. If someone is eating fewer calories or training hard this hormone can be raised already, what we don’t need is excessive amounts due to not getting enough sleep. Poor or lack of sleep also increases hunger and appetite leading us to grab the wrong foods when we’re in a pinch or just eat more calories than we wanted. We recover from our training during sleep, our muscles rebuild and we’re ready to train again at a high intensity. Try to get at least 7 hours when you can. You’ll feel better, your mind will be sharper and you won’t have as many cravings for the foods we’re trying to avoid when getting in better shape!

Advanced Strategy – Cycling calories and carbohydrates

Only use these next strategies when you’re already pretty lean and need that extra something. If you’re not using any of the other strategies outlined above or in Part 1 then do not start with these. Use the simpler ones, see results and work away with those consistently.

If you’re an athlete or you’re in pretty good shape already and looking to get very lean, sometimes you can’t rely on linear dieting. Periods of really low calories or carbohydrates are hard on the body and mind when done for a long time. Cycling carbs is used to prevent a fat loss plateau and to maintain your metabolism and workout performance. It’s only used by those whose nutrition is adhered to perfectly and should only be used for a short time.

Carbs are lower for a period of time and a refeed day is chosen where we eat more carbs during an 8-12 hour window. Proteins and fats are kept relatively the same and so the reduced carbs will reduce a lot of calories. Carb cycling like this affects a metabolism regulating hormone called leptin limiting how much it drops or giving it a little boost on the refeed days and in turn we keep our fat loss going. There a few methods you can use, a big refeed every 1-2 weeks during a low carb phase, a refeed every 3-4 days or just taking in a moderate amount of carbs during a low carb phase so you stay away from the extremes of a big refeed. Make sure to eat high fibre foods and have plenty of water during lower carb phases. As with everything experiment and see what works best for you!

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23 Feb

Drink More Water, Lose More Fat

The very first tip I give to clients for fat loss? Drink more water. Pretty easy but how many people actually drink enough? Here’s where science proves my point.

Water

Water and Weight Loss

Researchers in the UK split 84 people into 2 groups. After initially getting a 30 minute weight management consultation the participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group had to drink 500ml of water 30 minutes before each main meal of the day. (Breakfast, lunch and dinner) The second group just had to imagine having a full stomach before their meals. The study lasted 12 weeks and the results were fantastic.

Over the 12 weeks people who drank water before meals lost an average of 9 and a half pounds. 9 and a half! And if drinking water before meals is somehow too much hassle for you, the other group who just visualized being full before eating lost over 6 and a half pounds!

An older study looked at the effects of a lower calorie diet vs a lower calorie diet including increased water intake. Again, participants were split into 2 groups. Women on this study had 1200 calories a day with men having 1500 calories a day. The group with the added water were instructed to drink 500ml 30 minutes before the 3 main meals again and the results showed massive support for the group drinking more water. Both groups lost a lot of weight over the 12 week period. The low calorie diet group lost an average of 5-8kg (11-17.6 pounds). The low calorie diet plus water group lost a further 2kg on average or 7-10kg (15.4-22 pounds)

This really is compelling evidence that should encourage anyone trying to get in better shape to add more water into their daily routine. It’s a no brainer. It’s not always about cutting things out; sometimes it’s important to add things in. Fruit and veg, exercise and with the results of these studies, definitely water. It’s simple, effective and really takes no time at all.

My clients have had great success with this one trick alone and then they’ve the benefit of my personal training and other nutritional advice also. If you’re even a little interested, get in touch and I guarantee I can help.

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Reference: Parretti et al. 2015. Efficacy of water preloading before main meals as a strategy for weight loss in primary care patients with obesity: RCT. 2015; 23(9): 1785-1791.

Dennis, E., Dengo, A., Comber, D., Flack, K., Savla, J., Davy, K., & Davy, B. (2009). Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-aged and Older Adults Obesity.

18 Feb

5 Tips For Better Workouts

Consistently working hard in the gym or with any exercise you’re doing?

Great! You could be seeing results but sometimes working harder doesn’t lead to the results you’re after, what you need to do is work smarter. Here are a five tips to do that and keep the results coming your way. This is not one of them!!

tips

1. Warm up more effectively.

Your warm up is important to prepare your body to get the most out of your workout. If you’ve a shoddy warm up, you leave gains in the gym. Your warm up shouldn’t take forever. It should raise your core temperature, activate your muscles and mobilise your joints. Do this by foam rolling, light cardio, bodyweight exercises, dynamic stretching and finally ramping up sets using lighter weights until you reach your working weight.

2. Order your workout to do the big movements first before the smaller ones.

Compound exercises (exercises using more than one major muscle group) should be done before the smaller exercises like biceps curls or calf raises. Compound exercises include deadlifts, squats, bench presses, rows for example. These exercises use more muscles, help gain more strength and burn more calories. Do these first when you’re fresh and can put the most effort into them as they take a lot more energy and have a bigger effect on your nervous system. The goal should be to get stronger in these main lifts or exercises.

3. Train the pulling movements before pushing movements.

This relates more to the shoulder joint and in particular a small group of muscles called your rotator cuff, which helps stabilise your shoulder joint. The shoulder joint is the most mobile joint in the body and therefore also the most at risk to injury. Pushing movements rely on and can compromise the stability of the rotator cuff. By doing pulling movements, such as rows, pull-ups, and deadlifts, you’ll warm up and activate the cuff muscles surrounding the joint and help reduce your risk of injury.

4. Plan your core training better.

Core work is thrown into a workout all over the place as people think a stronger core will help everything else or they think training their stomach will make it smaller and shrink the fat there. (I’ve busted that myth in a previous blog post) The big compound moves I mentioned earlier require a strong core, but if we do sets of stomach exercises between sets, we fatigue the core and can’t perform those moves as well. Meaning we don’t get as much out of the exercises that would give us the most benefit. This is bad. Do your core training on a separate day or at the end of your training session.

5. Don’t expect every session to be amazing.

So many things affect how well we feel on any given day. Hydration, amount of sleep one had, what food you ate, hormone levels. The list goes on and on. Some days we feel like crap, our body or a muscle just hurts for no reason and other days we feel awesome. Your training session might require you to do a predetermined number of sets or reps in a given exercise but if you just had a big hen or stag party the day or two before don’t have a meltdown if you’re not at your best. Learn to listen to your body, take down the intensity a couple notches and pat yourself on the back for still training when others wouldn’t make time to try and better themselves.

Use these tips in your next workout and keep getting stronger, fitter and healthier.

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15 Feb

Strength Training For Women

Here are a few points on why women don’t need to shy away from strength training and how it’s so beneficial for all you ladies out there!

It’s great for your confidence! Anytime I speak with women about the benefits of lifting weights, increased confidence has always come up. I’ve seen it in the female clients I’ve trained and any other women I’ve spoken to who’ve started training with weights. When women begin to lift heavy things or do things in a gym they once thought they would never be able to do, the confidence boost is clear to see. That confidence spills over into all parts of their lives also.
It changes a negative mindset to a positive one. A lot of the time women think about losing this much or cutting that out of their diet. “I’ll never be able to do that, I’m not strong or fit enough” This negative thinking doesn’t help anybody. We need to change the negative mindset to a positive one in chasing performance based goals instead. Being able to do more push ups, squats or getting that elusive chin up! When we focus our energy on performing better and eating in a way to help us accomplish these goals, our physique will follow.
It helps gain lean mass and decrease body fat. Gaining lean mass or muscle helps to maintain a healthy body weight and can decrease body fat levels as muscle increases the metabolism and burns more calories. As we get older our bodies lose muscle mass (a condition known as sarcopenia) and weights training can slow this down and offset some of the losses if we actually gain some muscle.
Increased bone density. Strength training also increases bone density and prevents bone loss as we age. Low bone density or osteoporosis increases your chance of breaking or fracturing your bones, which is no fun when you’re young, and can be devastating as you get older.
Because it’s awesome.Being able to lift heavy stuff off the ground, pulling yourself up over a Chin-up bar, being able to jump higher and run faster are all pretty cool. When you know you don’t need help moving furniture round the house or lifting all the shopping you’re in a pretty good place!

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05 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.5

You need to give up carbs for fat loss.

Fat Loss Reality

This one is probably becoming more and more popular by the day. It wasn’t always that way though. Fats were first labelled the enemy years ago leading to low fat diets and fat free foods. Eating fats doesn’t make you fat, eating too many calories does! Foods containing fat form a vital part of a healthy diet. They help maintain lean body mass, assist with the function of our metabolism, are responsible for hormone production, lubricating joints and many other health and muscle building factors. Dietary fat can be broken up into monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated and hydrogenated fat. Eating the right amounts of the healthy fats and avoiding the bad fats is the trick. I say the right amounts of healthy fat as fats contain more than double the amount of calories as carbs and protein. 1g of fat = 9 calories, 1g of carbohydrate = 4 calories and 1g of protein also = 4 calories. This is why a lot of people may be overweight while eating healthily. If I need 2000 calories to maintain my weight and I eat more than that number even with the healthiest of foods, I will still gain weight.

Carbs and fats are both needed for us to be healthy and to aid in fat loss. More recently though, carbs have become the new enemy but they too have a significant role in fat loss. Our body needs glucose, (broken down carbohydrate) to work! Some argue that we don’t need carbs but many of the body’s basic functions decrease in performance if we don’t have enough. Our brain in particular needs glucose to function at its best. If you ever tried a really low carb diet you possibly experienced mental fog or headaches. Your brain was crying out for some precious glucose! When trying to lose fat, carbohydrates should serve as fuel for your workouts or to replenish your muscles after your workouts. Better workouts mean more strength, increased fitness and fat loss. If you eat an excess of carbs or calories, your liver converts them to fat and then returns them right into the bloodstream. By keeping carbs lower on days that you’re not training you avoid this.

Decreasing protein is a big no-no. Protein is the building block of all our cells. It helps build and repair muscle, makes you feel fuller for longer and our bodies actually burn more calories digesting protein than it does digesting carbs or fats.

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04 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.4

If I want to lose fat, I need to do cardio

Cardio

Fat Loss Reality

Walk into your typical gym and you’ll see that most of them have the guys and girls who do nothing but cardio for their entire session. 10 mins on the cross trainer or elliptical, 10 on the bike, and 10 on the treadmill. One striking thing that becomes clearly apparent is that over a number of weeks doing this type of training, their shape barely changes! Living proof that this steady state cardio isn’t very effective and becomes less effective at reducing body fat the more we do it. These people may become slightly smaller versions of themselves but that’s not really a massive improvement.

Most people will lose a couple pounds when they start any cardio program. Obviously, you’re burning more calories than you previously were. Usually this program becomes a long, drawn out battle with some cardio equipment or much worse for your joints, the road! The initial drop in weight is because the training is new. Things don’t stay that way for long as very soon, the weight loss stops even though you start doing longer sessions. Our bodies are machines of adaptation. As you get better at cardio, your body adapts and becomes more efficient. It doesn’t burn as many calories doing the same activity and eventually fat loss stops. Our bodies can start to use free flowing proteins in our blood for energy and soon our muscle gets smaller or atrophies. This is the worst thing we can do to ourselves, more muscle means more calories burned. Think of any long distance runner you see on TV or even in the park. The top athletes we see running 5km races, 10km races or even marathons like Mo Farah are all very small. Their bodies adapt to the training they do and as a result, they carry hardly any excess weight. The problem is they’ve little to no muscle mass either. Hardly an attractive physique. Look at most of your average road warriors out on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon who don’t have the nutrition plans like the aforementioned elite athletes and although they run or cycle for a long time, the majority are either really skinny or have a nice big tyre around their waists. The truth may hurt the cardio bunnies out there but a balanced training program putting in equal amounts of time to resistance training and different types of cardio result in a better physique than long bouts of steady state cardio on their own.

I feel some steady state cardio has it’s benefits and has a rightful place in someone’s training. I hear people say it’s good for their mind and they feel great doing it but I’ve yet to come across someone who actually looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

Studies have shown that higher intensity interval training has led to more significant decreases in body fat vs steady state cardio and the added benefit is this type of training takes less time to do. Higher intensity exercise can be done a number of ways using our body weight, weights training as well as cardio.

If you’ve read yesterday’s blog post, you’ll now know that strength training is just as beneficial if not more beneficial to your physique. A balance of resistance training, the right kinds and amounts of cardio and a healthier nutrition plan is the way forward. Also, in the case of running, some people just aren’t built for it. If you have flat feet/fallen arches or hyperextended knees for example, your knee joint will not absorb the shock as good as not having these characteristics. Take into account that for every pound we weigh, multiply that number by 4 and you have the force going through your knees at every foot strike. If you weighed 100 pounds, 400 pounds of force go through the knee with every single step. Hardly a great idea for those that weigh a lot more than 100 pounds. Learn the better way to train with The Fit Effect.

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Tune in tomorrow for Fat Loss Myth Number 5

03 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.3

By lifting weights I can turn my fat into muscle

5-pounds-of-fat-5-pounds-of-muscle

Fat Loss Reality

It is impossible to turn fat into muscle. Fat cells become bigger or smaller when we eat too many calories or burn more calories respectively. Weight training or resistance training will help you gain strength or build muscle. It won’t magically transform fat cells into muscle cells. Building muscle is easier for men as they have a lot more testosterone than women. Testosterone is a steroid hormone helping us build muscle, grow hair and it also helps to prevent osteoporosis. Studies have shown increases in testosterone levels after strength training. This is why strength training or lifting weights is good for everybody as it helps us get stronger, build lean muscle tissue and as already stated is great to prevent osteoporosis. There’s no reason for anybody of any age to shy away from weight training, I have trained clients in their 60’s.

The Scales Is A Bad Measure Of Success

Take a look at the above picture. People need to stop worrying about the weight on the scales. Instead, they should start thinking about how many inches they’ve lost or how they feel when their clothes start fitting better. Our muscles are more metabolically active. This means they burn more calories than fat. If one of my clients stays the same weight but has lost inches off his/her waist, arms or hips, that is a success.

Nobody cares what they weigh when they look better. If you don’t build muscle, which is difficult, the fact that you are training your muscles means they are more active. As a result, this will increase your metabolism. You can have a lot of muscle and still have fat covering it if you still take in more calories than you need, a caloric surplus. A successful fat loss plan mixes exercise, both weight training and the right kinds of cardio, with a healthy nutrition plan.

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See you back here soon for Fat Loss Myth Number 4. Can’t wait? Skip ahead in the blog!

To Your Success,

Martin

02 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.2

Small, frequent meals help to speed up your metabolism so you burn more fat.

Meal Frequency and Metabolism

Fat Loss Reality

Some “experts” proclaim eating every 2-3 hours will increase your metabolism. Some say it without any scientific proof to back up their point while others base their opinion on the thermic effect of food (TEF). Without getting too technical right now, TEF refers to the amount of energy your body must use to process the food you eat. On average, 10% of the calories you consume are burned by processing them. Protein has the highest TEF followed by carbohydrates and fat has the lowest TEF. This idea was taken and assumed that the more frequently we ate, the more calories we burned by processing it all. But 10% of any number of calories will be the same whether we eat them over 6 smaller meals or over 3 bigger meals.

Let’s take two people, A and B, who consumed the same amount of calories in one day. A ate 6 meals and B ate 3 meals. Both ate 1800 calories, TEF is 10% so we multiply by 0.1 to get the calories burned processing each meal.

Person A – 300 x 0.1 x 6 meals = 180 calories

Person B – 600 x 0.1 x 3 meals = 180 calories

Same amount burned either way. You don’t need to eat one way or the other. Choose a meal frequency that fits into your lifestyle whether it is a couple meals a day or many. If you prefer the regimen of frequent meals then go for it, likewise if you prefer bigger, less frequent meals that’s good too. Whatever your approach is, just be consistent with it as irregular eating patterns may affect your metabolism.

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Tune in tomorrow for Fat Loss Myth Number 3

01 Feb

FAT LOSS MYTH SERIES – NO.1

If I train my stomach really hard and every day, I will lose belly fat and get a 6 pack!

Fat Loss Reality

Everyone has a “6 pack”. The reason it’s not visible on a person is because their body fat percentage is too high. This means the muscle is covered with a layer of fat. In order to lose fat, you must be conscious of how many calories you’re taking in and how many you’re burning. Unfortunately for our friend here, just doing sit ups or training your stomach each and every day won’t make that layer of fat go away. For someone to stay the same weight they need to be in caloric balance or maintenance. If you’ve gained weight we can probably assume you’ve been in a caloric surplus. Too many calories in, not enough burned. For fat loss to happen we need to be in a caloric deficit. More calories burned than taken in.

Let’s take Jane as an example who needs 2000 calories each day to maintain her current weight. If Jane wants some fat loss she can eat fewer calories than the 2000 calories or eat the same amount of calories but burn more through exercise. The best approach is combining both methods. This way, our bodies use stored fat for fuel. Unfortunately, when our bodies burn fat we can’t choose which area the fat comes off. With consistent effort your entire body will become leaner including those areas where you most want the fat lost.

It’s easier to cut down our calorie intake by cutting out the obvious junk food everyone knows they don’t need. Drink more water, eat more fruit and veg which are healthier and fill you up without having a lot of calories and pay attention to the nutritional information on your foods when do your weekly shop.

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Stay tuned for Fat Loss Myth Number 2