Category: Tuesday Tip

Tuesday tip: Exercise Snacks 🏃🏼‍♂️

Following on from last week’s tip about thinking outside the gym here’s a practical way to do that – exercise snacks!

Studies show that spending over 6 hours a day sitting increases the risk of death by 40% and can actually almost cancel out any health benefits from a daily workout. Studies show that prolonged sitting/inactivity during the day substantially reduces muscles’ ability to absorb and use amino acids. Without sufficient amino acids, muscles cannot effectively repair and build themselves. However when participants broke up sitting with two min walks/chair squats every half-hour their muscles were better able to absorb and incorporate amino acids from their bloodstreams.

These ‘exercise snacks’ (brief 1-2 mins of exercise repeated throughout the day) can be extremely effective. Another study showed that incorporating exercise snacks (stair climbing in this case) every day for 6 weeks resulted in significant increases in aerobic fitness and leg strength, comparable to traditional longer workouts.

Now I’m not saying you should abandon your workouts but in the same way you include food snacks outside mealtimes, it’s worth including exercise snacks outside your workouts. These are a really feasible, time efficient way to improve fitness and health and well-being. They’re also a great way to get exercise in if you’re injured or recovering from illness/surgery etc and can’t workout.

Exercise Snacks require no gym membership, special clothing or footwear or equipment and very minimal time commitment. You can choose a variety of flavours – stair climbs, chair squats (sit to standing on tiptoes then repeat), quick walk around the office, desk push ups, a minute of jump jacks etc. Ideally, the activity should briefly raise your heart rate and breathing, last a minute or two, and happen often, preferably every half-hour. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or where you are – anytime is a good exercise snack time!

Happy Snacking! 🤗

Xx

Tuesday tip: Think outside the gym 🏋🏼‍♂️

Whilst you can’t out-exercise your diet and diet is undoubtedly king when it comes to fat loss it’s obviously still important to be active and to exercise for lots of reasons – not least of which is health and well being.

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. Studies show we usually over estimate cals burnt and how active we are. Even if you’re working out every day you may not be as active as you think if you spend the rest of the day sat down. So we are likely to perceive a workout as burning more calories than it actually does. There’s also a tendency after a tough workout to eat more- either because we reward ourselves for the perceived effort or because we’re hungry. There’s also a tendency to be generally less active too if you’re exhausting yourself in workouts.

The end result is that by being focused on workouts as the only source of calorie expenditure we can end up moving less generally and eating more.

So as well as workouts try to think beyond the gym. 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.

Happy Tuesday 🤗

Xx

Tuesday Tip: Preventing weight regain ✋🏻

Preventing weight regain starts from the moment you start trying to lose weight in the first place. Believe it or not the most important aspect of weight loss isn’t actually weight loss – rather it’s maintenance. Most people underestimate the importance of both maintenance and learning to live at your new goal weight (maintenance).

Maintenance is harder than losing the fat in the first place and it’s one of the main skills people ignore. The reality is the habits and behaviours that help you lose weight are the ones that will help you maintain it as well. You can’t expect to keep the weight off if nothing has changed. I often tell my clients they need to behave like the ‘slimmer’ / ‘fitter’ / ‘stronger’ (whatever THEIR goal is) version of themselves . What would that person do? That person probably can’t get away with 3 takeaways a week, or boozy lunches at the weekend etc. It’s about finding things you enjoy (both food and exercise) that fit into your goal/maintenance lifestyle. Swapping behaviours and habits for new ones. For example – not restricting foods you enjoy, but learning to include them as part of your eating plan, trying to be as physically active as possible for you generally and doing exercise you enjoy etc

In addition research shows that for each kg of weight lost there’s an increase in appetite and a drive to consume an extra 100 cals per day that a person that hadn’t lost the weight doesn’t experience. This means you are dealing with not only trying to establish new habits to help you maintain a lower weight, but you’re also experiencing more hunger than a similar weight person who hasn’t lost weight. It’s important to be aware of this – recognise that a little hunger isn’t always a bad thing and be prepared for it.

So don’t waste your money on fads and quick fixes. Instead look at how you’re approaching your fitness and diet goals and ask yourself – is this something I can maintain for the long term? Because if it isn’t, you’re going to struggle to make (and later maintain) progress.

Happy Tuesday 🤗

Xx