Category: Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Best methods for recovery? 🧊

Like everything in the fitness and diet industry the subject of recovery and methods to aid recovery are full of fads and social media trends. Common post workout recovery options include, foam rolling (with expensive, fancy rollers), massage guns and cold water immersion, with the latter gaining popularity as ice baths have become a must in “self-improvement/discipline” circles recently. Social media is full of celebrities and fitness personalities sharing their cold water immersion practices, with dedicated tubs/barrels etc.

Studies have shown that cold water immersion, massage guns and fancy foam rollers don’t actually result in significantly better recovery than just resting and good nutrition. In fact some are less effective. Several studies have also found that ice baths can negatively impact muscle and strength adaptations. A recent overview of studies found that taking an ice bath immediately after a workout leads to less muscle growth than resistance training alone.

Whilst often promoted as “game changers” these methods aren’t really that at all – at best they may help reduce soreness and perceptions of fatigue but don’t come even close to the effect that sleep and nutrition have on your recovery and muscle growth.

For competitive athletes, it may be important to incorporate some of these things into their recovery leading up to a competition, in conjunction with adequate rest and food, particularly at time where fatigue needs to be quite low. If you’re someone looking to increase muscle mass, cold water immersion should be used sparingly (e.g. only after very hard training sessions) as it can interfere with hypertrophy (muscle growth).

For most of us simply spending more time and energy focusing on good sleep and good nutrition will not only help you recover better and faster, and benefit your progress in the gym, but it will also likely positively contribute to your overall health and wellbeing.

🤗xx

Optimal vs reality…. ⭐️

One of the keys to losing weight and maintaining it is consistency, and one of the key things that help with consistency is learning not to throw in the towel and say f*ck it every time things don’t go to plan.

Obviously in an ideal world we’d all have an optimal workout routine – you’d manage 7 classes a week, you’d fit in 45 mins if stretching and your 10k run, and hit your calories every day. But life isn’t optimal and optimal is irrelevant if you don’t or can’t do it. Imperfect action is better than no action! The 5-10 min workout you actually do is better than the 45 min workout you don’t manage to fit in at all.

Life is full of unexpected obstacles. You can either let it defeat you and use it as an excuse to come off the wagon completely , or you can change your mindset and accept that it’s not about being perfect every single day. It’s about doing the best you can in the circumstances – that day/week.

So maybe you can’t fit in your planned 45 min workout, but could you do ten mins instead? Can’t fit in a 10k but can manage a 15 min run instead? Not going to hit that step goal – could you do a 5 mins walk anyway just to get a few more steps in? Not tracking your calories like you planned – ok well can you focus on making some different choices, fill up half your plate with veggies, cut back on a the dessert or booze? Had a rubbish day and eaten half a packet of biscuits? Stop stressing and just make sure the next thing you eat is back on track.

Even doing something, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is better than doing nothing!

🤗xx

Why exercise alone won’t get you results … 🏋🏼‍♂️

I know I say this a lot but If I had a pound for everyone I speak to who tells me that they exercise a lot but can’t understand they aren’t getting results I would be a rich woman!

I discussed this last week but I thought this pie chart helps visualise why those workouts have so little impact on your fat/weight loss and how what you do outside your workouts is far more important.

Fat loss is far more about behaviour change than it is about the calories you burn during a workout. It’s very hard to create a meaningful calorie deficit via exercise and activity alone. You have to work extremely hard to burn more than a few hundred calories in a workout and you can’t put exercise your diet (it’s a lot easier to eat several hundred calories than burn it off). Studies also show we usually over estimate cals burnt and how active we are. So instead of fixating on the small amount of your waking hours that you’re doing a workout, instead focus on the rest of the time.

The calories you burn in a 45 min workout will be considerably fewer than what you burn being generally active for the rest of the day. So think about how you spend the rest of your day. Do you find yourself sitting more than perhaps you need to? Do you amble instead of walking with purpose? Do you take the lift instead of the stairs. Think beyond the gym and focus instead on making yourself more active – get up, stand instead of sit, walk faster, walk more!

Also don’t be tempted to eat exercise calories back – just treat them as bonus cals rather than something to eat back.

Exercise for health and well-being and focus on the food side of things if you want to lose weight!

🤗xx

Stop exercising to lose weight… 🏃🏼‍♂️

Whenever someone wants to lose weight inevitably they place a huge focus on exercising to burn more calories. Exercise appears to be the holy grail of weight loss behaviours. Exercising to burn calories and lose weight becomes the main goal. And yes, of course it’s important to exercise and yes of course it does increase your energy output but, as I’ve discussed before, you will never ever be able to out-exercise food.

So whilst I wholeheartedly support people exercising more (I’m an instructor so obviously I do!) it’s not with the sole purpose of losing weight. That’s last on my list of reasons for anyone to partake in exercise and it should be last on yours too!

Instead, move your body to improve your mental and physical well being. There are so many reasons to exercise that go beyond burning calories.

* Exercise improves muscle mass, bone and joint health and keeps you functioning independently into old age.

* Whilst excess exercise can down-regulate immune function, regular exercise serves to improve the resiliency and expression/activity of immune cells and mediators so it improves immune function and helps protect against disease.

* It makes you feel stronger and more empowered

* It improves mood, can reduce anxiety and some symptoms of depression and relieves stress.

* It improves cardiovascular health and reduces disease risk

* It increases self confidence

Above all – exercise to celebrate that you can! Not to lose weight!

🤗xx