Ultra-FIT magazine

Week in, week out I see the same people doing the same cardio workouts. Minute after minute, hour after hour they spend cycling, rowing, running or attending group exercise classes and yet very few of them seem to lose any weight. What gives? Regardless of whether you are a high intensity interval training advocate or prefer a more sedate cardio zone workout, we all know that prolonged cardiovascular burns fat so why then are these people not losing weight? The answer is, quite simply, they are trying to outrun a poor diet and failing miserably to win the race.

On average, an hour of cardio will burn around 600 calories—yes I know that depends on bodyweight, intensity, exercise modality etc but it’s a pretty fair average. So, you do that hour of cardio five times a week to total around 3,000 calories of expended energy. A single pound of excess body fat is worth around 3,500 stored calories so, with all things being equal, someone performing five hours of aerobic exercise should lose a little under a pound a week. Surely then, after a few months of consistent cardio exercise, there should be a significant and noticeable weight loss. Shame this generally isn’t the case.

In very simple terms, if your diet is excessively calorie dense i.e. you are eating more than you need, you are going to have to do more than plug in your i-pod and trot on the treadmill if you want to lose weight. It doesn’t matter that you are in your so-called fat burning zone—if you are eating more than you need, you won’t lose weight and are probably merely reducing your rate of weight gain.

Surely it would make more sense to combine a moderate amount of exercise with eating a little less? All that endless cardio without dietary interventions is like running on the proverbial hamster wheel…you just end up going nowhere. Of course there is nothing wrong with exercising for prolonged periods if you enjoy it or because your sport e.g. long distance running requires it but if you want to see weight loss, as apparently 4 out of 5 exercisers do, surely you want the best results possible for your investment of exercise time? Interestingly, recent studies indicate that prolonged cardiovascular exercise increases  cravings for carbohydrates and appetite generally so, it would seem, no sooner have the calories been ”burnt off” than our bodies want to replace them quick-smart!

Amazingly, you need relatively little exercise to develop a good level of fitness, strength and enjoy the health benefits associated with working out. It’s the intensity of your exercise that triggers most of the positive responses associated with exercise and not the duration. Studies by Dr. Izumi Tabata have demonstrated that a 4 minute high intensity interval training session (yes – four minutes…that’s not a typo) produces improvements in anaerobic and aerobic fitness. For more details on Tabata’s training protocol check out this article… http://www.ultra-fitmagazine.co.uk/?p=612 Another short but sharp cardiovascular training protocol is GXP which stands for Graded Exercise Protocol which promises improved aerobic fitness in 12 minutes or less. For information on GXP visit http://www.ageless-athletes.com/aerobics_and_health.php

So— to summarize…you can’t outrun a bad diet. Weight management is, to quote fitness and nutrition author Mark Sissons, 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. If you are performing hours and hours of cardio for weight loss and not seeing the results you want (and deserve) your diet is the problem and not your exercise routine. Say no to hamster cardio and do the best weight management exercises known to man— the table push away and the fork put down!

This workout combines 2 exercises to make a simple but effective fat burning, fitness boosting, muscle toning workout which will take minutes rather than hours to complete. As always, make sure you warm up properly before exercising…

 

 

 

 

The BS (Burpee/Skipping) workout

10 burpees
50 rope turns
9 burpees
50 rope turns
8 burpees
50 rope turns
7 burpees
50 rope turns
6 burpees
50 rope turns
5 burpees
50 rope turns
4 burpees
50 rope turns
3 burpees
50 rope turns
2 burpees
50 rope turns
1 burpee
50 rope turns

Adjust the burpee exercise to suit your individual fitness level by adding or removing press ups and jumps – check out this video for a full demonstrationnof this workout by the author…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, you go to the gym 3 times a week and you work really hard during those few hours. There is no denying that you’re doing yourself a lot of good but, what about the other 165 hours of the week? In this article, we’ll lift the lid on Non Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) and look at ways you can get more active to enhance your health and reduce your waistline!

Previous generations were considerably more active than most of us are today. The increase in availability of labour saving devices, passive entertainment like TVs and computer games, a reduced requirement for manual labour and increased car ownership/usage have all contributed to a significant reduction of daily physical activity. Many of us spend large portions of our day sat at a desk, in our cars or on the sofa watching TV and even with the best will in the world, the 3 hours or so a week we spend in the gym is not a sufficient replacement for the active lifestyle of previous generations.  

Combined with an increased availability of calorie-dense food, the lowered amount of daily activity is a significant factor in the ever growing world-wide obesity problem. Our appetites remain unchanged even though our calorie requirements have been significantly reduced. Your body was designed to be active often and your stomach (approximately 1 litre in size) is capable of processing all of your nutritional needs to fuel that active lifestyle. The problem is that we aren’t as active as we used to be and no one has found a way to reprogram our appetites! Any significant reduction in calorie intake can trigger the starvation response meaning that metabolisms slow, body temperature is lowered, hunger levels are elevated and calorie burning is down-regulated. If cutting calories too greatly causes the starvation response, what is the alternative for anyone looking to maintain their weight and improve their health without starving themselves? The answer is Non Exercise Physical Activity or NEPA for short.

NEPA simply means moving more. It doesn’t matter what you do but just by moving more we will expend more energy. NEPA shouldn’t be tiring and isn’t a replacement for your regular exercise routine – it’s just additional daily activities done with the purpose of using your body a little more than usual to create a greater calorie deficit and make up for all those hours when we are sedentary.

Examples of NEPA

• Walk instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 1 mile
• Cycle instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 4 miles
• Get off the bus or train a couple of stops earlier and walk the rest of the way to work
• Stand instead of sitting – standing uses far more energy
• Use the stairs instead of the lift
• Walk during lunch breaks instead of staying at your desk
• Wash your car by hand
• Water your garden by hand using a watering can instead of a garden hose
• Take the dog (or the kids) for an after dinner stroll around the neighbourhood
• Carry your shopping in a basket instead of using a shopping trolley
• Periodically stand up and move around whilst at work – don’t get too desk bound
• Move at every opportunity – stretch while sat at your desk or while watching TV
• Try doing an active leisure activity like going bowling or ice skating instead of sitting in front of the TV

I’m sure you can think of plenty of other ways that you could get more NEPA into your day. Start with a few small daily increases in activity like maybe a 10 minute walk before breakfast or after dinner and build up from there with the aim of being physically active for at least 60 minutes per day. Don’t worry – they don’t have to be consecutive minutes, just fit them in where you can. The point of NEPA is that it should become habitual – a shift in attitude where you look for ways to move more and sit less. By the end of the year you may well find yourself several pounds lighter all because you made the effort to move around a bit more every day. Go and get your NEPA on!

Skipping and stuff workout

Skipping may well be one of the best all round cardio exercise you can do. It’s simple, can be done virtually anywhere and skipping ropes are cheap and hard-wearing. Combined with some simple bodyweight exercises, a skipping rope can really help you achieve a high level of fitness.

Repeat this cycle of exercises for as many laps as your fitness levels allow. Each lap takes 3 minutes so 5 laps = 15 minutes of exercise. Make sure you have a clock with a second hand on view or, alternatively, use a timer with an audible alarm.

Skip for 45 seconds

45 seconds of squats OR squat jumps

Skip for 45 seconds

45 seconds of bench dips OR press ups

For the skipping, use any technique you like so long as you keep that rope moving. Two-footed jumps, jogging on the spot, high knee sprints – they’re all good!

For the bodyweight exercises, chose the movement that best suits your current fitness level. If you want, start the workout using the harder variant and then regress to the easier variant as you become more fatigued. Whichever variant you choose (the second option is the harder) make sure you use good exercise technique for both effectiveness and safety reasons.

So, you go to the gym 3 times a week and you work really hard during those few hours. There is no denying that you’re doing yourself a lot of good but, what about the other 165 hours of the week? In this article, we’ll lift the lid on Non Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) and look at ways you can get more active to enhance your health and reduce your waistline!

Previous generations were considerably more active than most of us are today. The increase in availability of labour saving devices, passive entertainment like TVs and computer games, a reduced requirement for manual labour and increased car ownership/usage have all contributed to a significant reduction of daily physical activity. Many of us spend large portions of our day sat at a desk, in our cars or on the sofa watching TV and even with the best will in the world, the 3 hours or so a week we spend in the gym is not a sufficient replacement for the active lifestyle of previous generations.  

Combined with an increased availability of calorie-dense food, the lowered amount of daily activity is a significant factor in the ever growing world-wide obesity problem. Our appetites remain unchanged even though our calorie requirements have been significantly reduced. Your body was designed to be active often and your stomach (approximately 1 litre in size) is capable of processing all of your nutritional needs to fuel that active lifestyle. The problem is that we aren’t as active as we used to be and no one has found a way to reprogram our appetites! Any significant reduction in calorie intake can trigger the starvation response meaning that metabolisms slow, body temperature is lowered, hunger levels are elevated and calorie burning is down-regulated. If cutting calories too greatly causes the starvation response, what is the alternative for anyone looking to maintain their weight and improve their health without starving themselves? The answer is Non Exercise Physical Activity or NEPA for short.

NEPA simply means moving more. It doesn’t matter what you do but just by moving more we will expend more energy. NEPA shouldn’t be tiring and isn’t a replacement for your regular exercise routine – it’s just additional daily activities done with the purpose of using your body a little more than usual to create a greater calorie deficit and make up for all those hours when we are sedentary.

Examples of NEPA

• Walk instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 1 mile
• Cycle instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 4 miles
• Get off the bus or train a couple of stops earlier and walk the rest of the way to work
• Stand instead of sitting – standing uses far more energy
• Use the stairs instead of the lift
• Walk during lunch breaks instead of staying at your desk
• Wash your car by hand
• Water your garden by hand using a watering can instead of a garden hose
• Take the dog (or the kids) for an after dinner stroll around the neighbourhood
• Carry your shopping in a basket instead of using a shopping trolley
• Periodically stand up and move around whilst at work – don’t get too desk bound
• Move at every opportunity – stretch while sat at your desk or while watching TV
• Try doing an active leisure activity like going bowling or ice skating instead of sitting in front of the TV

I’m sure you can think of plenty of other ways that you could get more NEPA into your day. Start with a few small daily increases in activity like maybe a 10 minute walk before breakfast or after dinner and build up from there with the aim of being physically active for at least 60 minutes per day. Don’t worry – they don’t have to be consecutive minutes, just fit them in where you can. The point of NEPA is that it should become habitual – a shift in attitude where you look for ways to move more and sit less. By the end of the year you may well find yourself several pounds lighter all because you made the effort to move around a bit more every day. Go and get your NEPA on!

I recently received an email from a concerned reader…

“Dear Pat, I really enjoy your articles and weekly newsletters and am very keen to make some changes in 2012 to so am fitter and healthier by the end year. The problem is that I feel a bit overwhelmed by everything I am trying to do and don’t know if I can stick with it for much longer. Can you offer any advice before I fall off the wagon?”

How could I resist such a heartfelt plea for help? The email included the changes the reader was trying to implement…

1. Eat five portions of vegetables a day
2. Eat three portions of fruit a day
3. Drink two litres of water a day
4. Eat protein at every meal
5. Eat lots of healthy fats every day
6. All but eliminate sugary and refined carbs
7. Walk 30 minutes every day
8. Mediate for 30 minutes every day
9. Learn something new every day
10. Strength train three times a week
11. Do cardio interval training twice a week
12. Stretch every day for 20 minutes
13. Spend less time on the internet social networking
14. Get a massage twice a month to help me recover from my workouts
15. Find a job closer to home to give me more quality time with my family

Now, I don’t know about you but to me that list looks like the ultimate formula for fitness, health and happiness and something that most of us should try and aspire to but the reality is, that is a whole lot of stuff to try and change in one go! No wonder the poor reader was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

This “try to fix everything” approach is common at this time of year. After years of abuse and neglect, many people wake up on New Year’s morning and say “Right – that’s it! I will turn my life around”. As admirable as that statement is, trying to change everything at once will more often than not lead to a few weeks of enthusiasm and then a huge collapse and the subsequent return to old habits.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t try and make changes, just that there is a better way to do it than trying to change everything about your life at once. I call this approach “One Simple Thing”.

Basically, instead of trying to change your entire life overnight, pick one thing from your list that you have absolute confidence you can stick to for the next month. Pick the easiest thing on your list, such as drinking two litres of water a day. Focus 100% on this one change and make sure that, by the end of each and every day, you have achieved it. Then, after a week, add another item from your list. Make sure you maintain your water drinking as well though – no slipping allowed. Make this second change a fairly easy one such as doing cardio intervals twice a week.

Continue adding one thing per week but remember the caveat – you must be 100% confident you can maintain this change for a month. Continue adding a change a week until, in the case of the reader who wrote to me, 15 weeks later you have changed a great many behaviours one week at a time. If at any point, you feel a slip coming on, don’t add a change on that particular week but wait until you have regained stability before addressing the next thing on your list.

I truly believe that if more people addressed their lifestyle changes using the One Simple Thing approach, there would be far more fit and healthy people around!

So, you go to the gym 3 times a week and you work really hard during those few hours. There is no denying that you’re doing yourself a lot of good but, what about the other 165 hours of the week? In this article, we’ll lift the lid on Non Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) and look at ways you can get more active to enhance your health and reduce your waistline!

Previous generations were considerably more active than most of us are today. The increase in availability of labour saving devices, passive entertainment like TVs and computer games, a reduced requirement for manual labour and increased car ownership/usage have all contributed to a significant reduction of daily physical activity. Many of us spend large portions of our day sat at a desk, in our cars or on the sofa watching TV and even with the best will in the world, the 3 hours or so a week we spend in the gym is not a sufficient replacement for the active lifestyle of previous generations.  

Combined with an increased availability of calorie-dense food, the lowered amount of daily activity is a significant factor in the ever growing world-wide obesity problem. Our appetites remain unchanged even though our calorie requirements have been significantly reduced. Your body was designed to be active often and your stomach (approximately 1 litre in size) is capable of processing all of your nutritional needs to fuel that active lifestyle. The problem is that we aren’t as active as we used to be and no one has found a way to reprogram our appetites! Any significant reduction in calorie intake can trigger the starvation response meaning that metabolisms slow, body temperature is lowered, hunger levels are elevated and calorie burning is down-regulated. If cutting calories too greatly causes the starvation response, what is the alternative for anyone looking to maintain their weight and improve their health without starving themselves? The answer is Non Exercise Physical Activity or NEPA for short.

NEPA simply means moving more. It doesn’t matter what you do but just by moving more we will expend more energy. NEPA shouldn’t be tiring and isn’t a replacement for your regular exercise routine – it’s just additional daily activities done with the purpose of using your body a little more than usual to create a greater calorie deficit and make up for all those hours when we are sedentary.

Examples of NEPA

• Walk instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 1 mile
• Cycle instead of driving – especially if journeys are less than 4 miles
• Get off the bus or train a couple of stops earlier and walk the rest of the way to work
• Stand instead of sitting – standing uses far more energy
• Use the stairs instead of the lift
• Walk during lunch breaks instead of staying at your desk
• Wash your car by hand
• Water your garden by hand using a watering can instead of a garden hose
• Take the dog (or the kids) for an after dinner stroll around the neighbourhood
• Carry your shopping in a basket instead of using a shopping trolley
• Periodically stand up and move around whilst at work – don’t get too desk bound
• Move at every opportunity – stretch while sat at your desk or while watching TV
• Try doing an active leisure activity like going bowling or ice skating instead of sitting in front of the TV

I’m sure you can think of plenty of other ways that you could get more NEPA into your day. Start with a few small daily increases in activity like maybe a 10 minute walk before breakfast or after dinner and build up from there with the aim of being physically active for at least 60 minutes per day. Don’t worry – they don’t have to be consecutive minutes, just fit them in where you can. The point of NEPA is that it should become habitual – a shift in attitude where you look for ways to move more and sit less. By the end of the year you may well find yourself several pounds lighter all because you made the effort to move around a bit more every day. Go and get your NEPA on!

A calorie is a unit of energy – specifically heat. Food is burnt and the amount of heat given off is measure and recorded and that’s how many calories your food contains. This is a flawed science as the food you consume acts differently in the digestive process to just being set on fire and essentially means that food labels aren’t necessarily accurate when they list the amount of calories per serving of the foods you eat.

You body converts unused calories into fat. It tries its best to use the excess fuel for metabolic processes such as restocking your liver and muscles with energy-releasing glycogen but, if the onslaught of excess energy lasts more than a couple of meals, excess calories are converted to adipose tissue, better known as body fat.

Body fat is a concentrated form of energy and provides many thousands of calories for you to use during times of reduced food intake. Even a very lean person, say 170 lbs at 8% body fat, has around 13.5 lbs of fat which contains over 47250 calories of usable energy – that’s enough to run about 472 miles! However, not all calories are created equal and while fat contains 9 calories per gram, alcohol contains 7 and protein and carbs contain 4 a piece, what you eat is not necessarily what you get in terms of energy.

Eating, digesting, absorbing and eliminating nutrients from food uses energy. The very process of taking food into your body uses some of the energy within the food you eat! The amount of energy depends on the food being eaten. This is called the thermal effect of food. The thermal effect of food is seldom taken into account in discussions about diet. Most mainstream dietary advice will suggest you eat a specific number of calories but, like the measuring of calories in the first place, this is a flawed approach to weight management.

Fat has a very low thermal effect (TEF for short) and only around 3-5% of fat energy consumed is lost in the process of ingestion, digestion and elimination. Carbohydrate has a thermal effect of around 10%. The TEA of protein is around 30%. What does all this mean? For every portion of protein you eat, almost one third of the ingested food is used in the digestive process. This is one of the reasons that high protein diets work so well – you end up with a whole lot less calories than you are consuming.

With the flawed way we measure the calorie content in food combined with the TEA of the foods we eat; it’s very hard to get an accurate picture of exactly how much energy you are ingesting. The food labels that state calorie values and the dietary recommendations for food intake don’t provide the whole picture. So what’s the alternative? Simply eat a diet rich in fresh vegetables, protein, healthy fats, low sugar, moderate fruit and low to moderate grains and your weight will balance itself. Counting calories is time consuming and, as we’ve seen now, kind of pointless if you can’t rely on the numbers. Eating a well-balanced diet, keeping your insulin levels stable and keeping active will ensure your weight remains within healthy parameters without having to waste time crunching numbers. You body is very bad at converting “good” foods to fat – you’ve got to eat a whole lot of vegetables and lean protein for them to achieve any resulting weight gain! By choosing natural and healthy foods, your body will function better, burn “hotter” by keeping your metabolism elevated, keep your muscles and brain supplied with a steady level of glucose and create an internal environment that is custom made for fat burning and not fat storage.

Do you need to create a calorie deficit to lose weight? Of course! But this is best achieved by eating well rather than cutting a seemingly random amount of calories from your daily diet. How can we decide how many calories we should be eating when TEA is not even considered and food values are unreliable?

Bottom line; do not worry about the mathematics of weight loss – the numbers seldom add up! Instead, eat well, eat a little less and move a little more. Diet is just another dirty four-letter word and implies there is a short term fix to the long term problem of being overweight. Weight management is a lifelong pursuit and should be treated as a lifestyle change and not an attempt at a quick fix!

One of the best ways to ensure you are getting the most from your cardio is to monitor your heart rate. This can be done using a chest strap heart rate monitor, taking your pulse manually (either at your neck or wrist) or making use of the built in heart rate monitors many cardio machines now have built in. Whichever method you use, by keeping an eye on how fast your heart is beating you can ensure you are working at the right level.

 

 

To get maximum benefit from your cardio, it is important to keep your heart rate between 60 to 90% of your maximum heart rate. Calculating your heart rate training zone (HRZ) is very simple so grab your calculator and follow the instructions below…

Start with 220 and take away your age in years. Multiply this number by 0.6 to get your 60% figure. Repeat the calculation but this time multiply by 0.9 to give you your 90% figure – these figures represent your upper and lower heart rate thresholds.

Example for a 40 year old exerciser
220 – 40 = 180
180 x 0.6 = 108 beats per minute
180 x 0.9 = 162 beats per minute
Training zone = 108 to 162 beats per minute

At the lower end of the scale you are working almost exclusively aerobically and at the higher end of the scale you are beginning to work anaerobically. You should aim to stay between these figures for at least 20 minutes when performing your cardio to get the greatest benefits in fitness and wellbeing from your cardio time.

Burpee, medicine ball and skipping circuit

For this workout you just need a medicine ball, a jump rope and some floor space. It’s going to get a bit loud too so make sure you warn your neighbours…!

Perform 10 laps of the following circuit, starting a lap every 2nd minute. If this proves too challenging, start a lap every 2.5 minutes and only perform 8 laps in total.

• 5 Burpees
• 10 medicine ball slams
• 15 Squats
• 20 Lateral Jumps
• Jump rope until the next 2 minute point (active recovery)

 

 The Exercises

Burpees
Squat down and place your hands outside of your feet
Jump your feet back into the push up/press up position
Perform a single re
Jump your legs back in
Leap into the air
Land (!!!) and repeat four more times

Medicine Ball Slams
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and holding your medicine ball in both hands
Lift the medicine ball overhead and raise up onto your toes
Drop onto your heels, flex your abs hard and hurl the ball down at the floor around 12″ in front of your feet
Catch the ball as it rebounds and repeat
***Warning*** do not use a gel filled medicine ball for this exercise – it may burst!

Squats
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your hands by your sides
With your weight on your heels, push your butt back and bend your knees
Aim for a 90 degree bend at the knees
Push back up into the standing position
Only 19 left to complete…!

Lateral Jumps
Stand next to your discarded medicine ball
With your feet together, bend your knees into a quarter squat
Jump sideways over the ball
Immediately jump back again
That’s one rep – continue until you have completed the full 20 reps (on each side of the ball)