Drinking water has many benefits. Water increases energy, relieves fatigue, is great for flushing out toxins, improving your skin’s complexion, and aids in digestion but when it comes to weight management water is crucial.

Developing the awareness between hunger and thirst is a great starting point. Most clients would know how to manage their macro-nutrient intake

Let’s keep it simple, we need 8 (250ml) glasses of water per day and remain consistent with our water intake. Going to the bathroom frequently, in the beginning, is key as your new hydration habits settle in. When you visit the lavatory you will see a colour and smell of your urine.  If your urine is dark yellow with a pungent nitrate smell you need to hydrate urgently.  If your urine is translucent and odourless you are smashing it!  Don’t forget to to top up after every time you visit the bathroom as you can drop up to 400ml everytime.

How to split your water intake:

Have a glass when you wake up, before and after every meal, and before bedtime. It is this simple!

Drinking water at regular intervals allows for the hunger response to be recognised as just that HUNGER and not THIRST.

Take the design of intermitted fasting. The principle is that you have no food for 8-16hrs but you can have fluids like water, coffee and tea as long as you exclude any calorie-based additives like sweeteners, milk, sugars. This intermittent fasting shows that you can reduce hunger signals by increasing your fluid intake.

I’ll leave you with this.

That feeling in your gut of emptiness what is it? Are you thirsty or hungry?

Will you be able to recognise the difference?

Chat Soon!

Sid

Sleep, it’s all in the ZZZ’s

 

I hope you’re doing well. Today I wanted to briefly chat about another factor besides diet and exercise that may prevent you from achieving your goals. This is part of your tangible results, mental clarity, and feelings of general well-being.

Sleep is something we tend to sacrifice first when we’re trying to reach a deadline or want to party for an extra few hours. While it’s normal that we lose some sleep, it’s actually very important that you get consistently good quality sleep. When we sleep, our body gets an opportunity to rejuvenate and repair itself, our hormones are regulated, and you should wake up with a clear head, ready to make good decisions and smash your daily routines.

Some people are more prone to having sleep issues, which you should speak to your doctor about, but there are some things we can do to help us sleep better.

Our hormones play a huge role in our behavior. Men low in testosterone tend to be more lethargic and thus demotivated so if you’re feeling off for a long period of time, you may want to get that sorted by visiting your doctor. In women hormone levels typically fluctuate quite rapidly so you need to bear this in mind on your journey. During the pre-menstrual cycle, you will experience more hunger because the body is preparing to undergo an energetically exhaustive process, you will also retain a lot of water, so weight gain at this time is normal but not permanent. Keep a track of it.

When we are stressed out, our central nervous system reacts to this, stress makes our body think there’s imminent danger. Stress releases hormones, increasing blood pressure, increasing breathing and heart rate which plays havoc with your body. This affects you physically as well as mentally, some people eat more, others eat less, it makes you more prone to falling sick, and certain mental illnesses can even alter your normal behaviour. So, it’s important to take time out of your day just for yourself. Many successful people carve out 5 minutes to meditate, sitting and breathing without thinking about anything except the present moment. Going for a walk or having a stretch to clear your mind are other ways you can take a little breather and stay balanced.

Firstly, set an alarm, the average human needs 6-9 hours of sleep a night, so depending on when you need to wake up, count backward and decide when lights out need to be. Secondly, practice good sleep hygiene. Keeping your sleeping area free from distractions, no laptop, no phone, no gadgets. The blue light from our screens interrupts the production of melatonin (the sleepy hormone), so put it away. Thirdly, if your mind races, keep a notebook nearby, write them down so that you can sort it out in the morning. Lastly, make sure you time your caffeine intake, as a rule of thumb, none after 4 pm. Stimulants play havoc with our ability to fall asleep so keep them to a minimum.

I wish you a long happy life with some much-needed recharge time.

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What intensity should you be working at?

 

As a personal trainer, one of the questions that I get asked most often is “What should my intensity be during exercise?” In this post, I hope to answer some of these questions. 

Firstly, balance is still an essential part of any program. You do not want to find yourself overtraining as it can increase your risk of injury and burnout. If you are new to exercise, I suggest that you start at a lighter intensity and then slowly build up to moderate or vigorous intensity. Studies have shown that working at a vigorous intensity can lower your immune system. There is no harm in smashing a great HIIT session but make sure that you provide your body with the right fuel and rest post-workout. 
Once you know what your desired outcome is, you will then be able to understand at what intensity you should push your heart rate. 

There are two ways that you can determine your exertion. Firstly by how you are feeling (rate of perceived exertion =RPE), secondly by your heart rate (beats per minute = BPM).

1. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)

Although perceived exertion is not as objective as your BPM, it is still one of the most useful tools to understand how hard you are working. RPE is based on how you are feeling when you are doing your workout. To make this more realistic 1/10 is like sitting at your desk, 3/10 a gentle stroll, 5/10 an easy jog, 7/10 is a tempo run and 10/10 would be as if you are smashing a flat-out sprint.

See the image below for more details.

Let’s say that you want to focus on fat burning. You need to be able to say your full name, phone number, and street address without taking a breath. You should be able to talk without any broken sentences. To decrease the intensity slow down the movement or include more rest periods. To increase the intensity simply speed up, decrease the rest periods, and if you still feel that this is not challenging you enough then have to look at progressing the range of motion, time that the body is under tension, and the progressive load applied.

2. Heart Rates Zones 
If you have a fitness tracker with a built-in heart rate monitor, then you are winning. So, what does the number next to the bpm on the watch mean for you?

Your exertion zone for heart rates is based on your age and therefore it will vary for each individual.

I’ve broken down the steps for you so that you can easily work this out for yourself.

Step 1 – Determine your maximum heart rate by using the formula below

220 – YOUR AGE = Maximum Heart Rate (MHR)

Step 2 – Determine what zone you want to focus on. Use the chart above to help you decide.

For this example, let’s say you want to become more efficient at burning body fat. Then you would use the formula below.

MHR x 60% and MHR x 69% = Beats Per Minute(BPM)

Just to make sure you understand this, let’s say that you are 35 years old, and you want to focus on becoming more efficient at burning body fat. You will need to exercise at an intensity of 60-69% of your MHR.

Step 1. 220 – 35(age) = 185 bpm (MHR)

Step 2. 185 bpm (MHR) x 60% = 111 bpm and 185 bpm (MHR) x 69% = 127.5 bpm.

Therefore my desire heart rate must remain between 111- 127.5 BPM.

If your desired outcome is different from the above example, use the steps above to guide you in the right direction. 

Hope this helps you understand your body better.

Chat Soon

Sid 

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What are Macronutrient’s?

This week we want to look beyond calories and focus on what those calories are made up of. So we want to discuss macros, or macronutrients to put it more formally.

So what are they exactly? Macros are the three major nutrients that we get from food, yes, food provides us with vitamins and minerals (these are micronutrients), but what we largely require are the substances that help our bodies function, grow and perform at the cellular level.

These are your proteins, carbohydrates and fats, all of which are broken down by the body for cellular needs, these are literally the building blocks to what makes you, you at the physical level. Today we’ll focus on carbs and protein, which both contain 4 calories per gram, but play pretty different nutritional roles in the body. 

What is a carb?

When we hear the word “carb” your mind probably goes straight to bread and pasta. This is an accurate picture, but in reality, almost all food sources contain carbohydrates. At the molecular level, carbs are basically big complexes of sugars, that are bound together. When ingested, they are broken down into simple sugars, which your body primarily uses to generate energy.  If you go back to your high school biology classes, you’ll remember the term “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” the carbs that your body breaks down provide the mitochondria with the “coal” to make that “power”. This occurs via a process called glycolysis, where the mitochondria produce ATP, which is the energy molecule that facilitates all energetic processes in the body.

Of course, as amazing a fuel source as carbs are, there’s also a downside. Once your body has broken down and taken all the carbs it needs to make all this energy, all the extra carbs you’ve eaten get stored. First, excess carbs are surrounded with water molecules and stored in muscle tissue in a molecule called glycogen, these are the first reserves. Once all the glycogen that can possibly be stored has been, your cells then start converting those excess carbs into triglycerides for long-term storage A.K.A fat. So finding a balance in carb consumption is highly important!

 

What about protein?

Proteins from your diet provide your body with the building blocks for protein synthesis in the body, these are called amino acids. The most obvious sources that may come to mind are from animal products such as meat, poultry, fish and eggs, but all living things require proteins to function, and as such you also get protein from plant derived sources, like legumes, leafy greens, nuts, and seeds. In fact, protein is so abundant that most people hardly suffer from protein deficiency, unless they’re malnourished or have a disorder.

When you eat proteins, your body can break them down to use in your own bodily proteins, this includes muscle growth, and muscle repair but providing amino acids for your cells to function and repair. The key thing to focus on is making sure you’re eating complete proteins, if you eat animal products this is fairly easy, but if you’re plant-based you need to make sure eating enough variety to get all 20 amino acids in your diet.

 What about fats?

To round off the focus on macros, we’re going to give you a little primer on fats. Fats, compared to carbs and protein, provide more calories per gram (9 as opposed to 4 calories per gram), this is largely because in the body, fats can be stored in adipose tissue without needing additional processing, so they can be packed tightly together as long-term energy reserves.

Fat stores occur naturally in the body, even the skinniest models or the most ripped athletes have some percentage fat in their body, because fats play a vital role both metabolically, and structurally in the body. Metabolically, fats provide the starter materials for many hormones in the body, they help metabolize fat soluble vitamins, they’re a source of energy, and they help protect against toxic substances by diluting them. Structurally, visceral fat (the fat that’s underneath the abs, not the stuff that gives you a muffin top) acts as a shock absorber for impacts to protect your vital organs.

So now you know that fat plays an important role, but what sorts of fats are better to be eating, and how much? The answer to that is complicated, and it really depends on your individual needs, but dietary fat comes in two forms, saturated and unsaturated.

The difference between the two names for these kinds of fat gets complicated and we don’t want to go down a chemistry rabbit hole but essentially, saturated fats are solid at room temperature (like butter or lard) and unsaturated fats are liquid.

Most studies show that eating unsaturated fats as opposed to saturated fats decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease, and if we look into the actual foods we’re comparing, we can see why. Saturated fats include cheese, dairy and animal products. Unsaturated fats include nuts, seeds and olive oil which also provide essential fatty acids that are good for brain development.

Ultimately, what you consume is up to you, but how will you be serving your goals? LOL!!!!

Keep smashing it!

Sid

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