Tag: cut calories

Tuesday Tip: Lemon water 🍋

Social media claims lemon water aids digestion, detoxifies the body, rejuvenates skin, promotes weight loss, boosts metabolism, balances pH, reduces inflammation and even prevents cancer. So, is it really an elixir of life? Nope!

1. Weight loss

Lemons contain pectin, a type of fibre that can help with fullness but a squeeze of juice contains virtually none. Water may fill you up or replace a higher-calorie drink, but there’s no magic effect from the lemon.

2. Detoxification

Your liver and kidneys remove waste products from your body. They don’t need ‘detoxing”’ certainly not by lemon water. No food or drink flushes mysterious toxins from your system.

3. Balancing pH

The claim is that our bodies are too acidic and need “alkaline” foods. In reality, your body tightly regulates blood pH. If it moves outside its normal range, that’s a serious medical problem not something fixed by breakfast! Food may alter the pH of your urine, but it cannot meaningfully change your blood pH. There’s also no evidence that an alkaline diet or lemon water prevents or cures cancer.

4. Boosting metabolism

Lemon water has no meaningful effect on metabolism. Many so-called ‘metabolism-boosting’foods produce, at most, a tiny and temporary effect.

5. Digestion

Good hydration supports normal digestion and helps prevent constipation. Adding lemon isn’t necessary it’s the water doing the work.

6. Immunity

Lemon provides some vitamin C, but the small amount used in lemon water is unlikely to “boost” your immune system or make a meaningful difference if you already eat a reasonably balanced diet.

Lemon water isn’t harmful per se, but regularly exposing teeth to acidic drinks can contribute to enamel erosion. It may also aggravate heartburn or reflux in some people.

So drink it if you enjoy the taste or the ritual but don’t expect it to detox your body, melt fat or transform your health!

Happy Tuesday 🤗

Xx

Tuesday Tip: Do you need electrolytes? 💧

Electrolyte drinks are all over social media at the moment: tablets, powders and expensive little sachets promising ‘better hydration’. But does your 45-minute workout really require a this? Probably not!

Electrolytes are minerals including sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium. They help regulate fluid balance and are involved in nerve signals and muscle contractions. They are essential but that doesn’t automatically mean you need to buy a supplement. Your body is great at keeping these minerals within a narrow range, and most of us replace what we lose through ordinary food. For everyday life and a typical gym class, walk, run or workout, plain water is usually absolutely fine. Electrolytes become more useful when losses are genuinely high; prolonged or intense exercise (over 90 minutes), very hot conditions, unusually heavy sweating, endurance events, or significant fluid loss through vomiting or diarrhoea. Just because you sweated that means you need them, we all sweat during exercise!

Also sodium is the main electrolyte lost in sweat, but many of us already consume enough, if not too much, in our diet. Regularly adding more ‘just in case’ isn’t better and can be damaging , particularly if you have high blood pressure, kidney or heart problems. Some products are also rather high sugar. So after your workout class, drink some water and eat your usual balanced meal. You almost certainly don’t need a brightly coloured drink, a salty sachet or a monthly supplement subscription to recover!

Electrolytes aren’t nonsense but they are marketed as necessary when they really aren’t. Save them for when the duration, heat or sweat loss genuinely warrants them. As a personal note- I’ve not taken any electrolytes at all during this hot summer and I do tonnes of exercise a week teaching classes (and had no ill effects!).

Save your pennies! Save your blood pressure and and if you are using them encourage you to drink by making your water taste nicer then

go for squash instead.

Happy Tuesday 🤗

Xx

Tuesday tip: Exercise Snacks 🏃🏼‍♂️

It can be hard to exercise when the weather is warm but here’s a tip to help.

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 when it’s hot, 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 ,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