Why are women scared of the weight room?

For a lot of women starting out on a weight loss programme or just looking to get fit, the weight room is a place they avoid like a man avoids cleaning. On their quest to slim down, the worry of becoming a female Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps them as far away from pumping iron as possible. However, by doing this, women may be missing out on huge health, fitness and weight loss benefits.




Why do most women think that touching a weight will make them look like this?

 

Muscle, the fat burner

It’s been highlighted in some of the previous posts, that, muscle uses energy even when you’re not doing anything. So, it would make sense that, the more muscle you have, the more energy you burn throughout the day. To put it in simple terms, if two people did exactly the same amount of work during the day but one had slightly more muscle, then that person would use more energy during the day.

The problem comes when you start to do lots of cardio and lots of dieting. When you do this, as well as water and fat, you start to lose muscle, which isn’t good. So, even if you don’t want to be bursting out of your t-shirts any time soon, it’s essential to do some resistance work to minimise your muscle loss.

Muscle, the injury preventer

If you move, at all, you are at risk of injuring yourself, you only have to see how many “accident claim” adverts there are to realise that people are always slipping, tripping and falling over. So, if your muscles and connective tissues are more tissue paper than...than...well, something tougher than tissue paper, you might end up with a serious injury.

Weight training can toughen up those muscles and connective tissues (ligaments and tendons) and so reduce that risk of injury. So, hit the weights to avoid being the next person in that annoying accident claim advert.

I hate those injury lawyers adverts. Anyway, has anyone
ever actually slipped on a banana peel?



Muscle, the stabiliser

When you had your first bike it probably came with two little wheels on the side that stopped you falling off and wobbling all over the place. Your muscles do exactly the same thing and they are doing it all the time. When you move your muscles constantly make minor adjustments to keep you up right. If you want to know this processes actual name, it’s proprioception, just in case you were curious.

Simply then, if you start to waste away this muscle, you’re removing the stabilisers. Obviously you’re not going to start falling and stumbling like Babmi on ice, not now anyway. But as you get older, it will definitely become an issue.

Still scared of the weight room

The title of this post might point at just the weight room but muscle gain can also be built from exercises that don’t use weights. Resistance training that uses body weight is great because you can do it anywhere, although firing out some press-ups at the bus stop will draw strange looks from passers-by.

It was said at the beginning, weight training or resistance training will not make you bulk up into a muscle machine, which requires lots and lots of training and nutrition. It will though help you burn more fat and rescue the chances of you getting injured.

So, ladies, forget hiding away from the weight room or some resistance training.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Running my first race in the dark

Last Friday I ran my first race that took place in the dark, in the Skeleton Race in Loughborough. It was another great experience to add to the small number that I’ve already had in running. As well as being my first race in the dark it was also the first race I’ve don’t that didn’t take place in the morning so the preparation was completely new. (I did want to put some pictures in but it turns out that there wasn't anyone taking pictures that you can buy)

First things first, preparation

I really wasn’t sure what to do during the day; should I go for a gentle run in the morning? What should I eat, when should I eat? I think I could have done a little more research than I did but in the end I went for doing nothing in the day and pretty much ate as I normally would; I had couple of pieces of toast for breakfast, early lunch and then an early dinner. Even though I could have known a little more about what I should have been doing, I made a plan. I think this is important for everyone to do for every race, no matter what your ability. Remember; fail to plan, then plan to fail.

Committing a cardinal sin, again

If you’ve read some of my other posts (if not, then why not?) then you might have stumbled across my post about my last race and committing some of the “cardinal sins of road running”. Well, on Friday I committed a big one; I didn’t warm-up. To make it worse, it was a freezing evening, making injury a huge risk.

Once the race started I could feel how stiff my muscles were and it took them about a mile to warm-up. Even though I didn’t end up injured, I think, in fact I know, that I would have had a better time if I had warmed-up.

Head torches

The problem about running in the dark is that, well, it’s dark. Race rules said that all runners must carry a torch or wear a head torch (I opted for a pretty cheap head torch). Friday was the first time I had run with it (another slap on the wrists for me, I know) and let me tell you, it’s tough to run in the dark with a head torch that doesn’t offer much in the way of light and that bounces around your head.

When the race started there was, like you’d expect, lots of runners lined up ready to go. That meant that there were lots of head torches lighting up the way. After about a mile, there were less people around me, meaning less light, and after about 2 miles there was no one in sight in front or behind me......I was all alone.

Nearly getting lost

So, 2 miles down, I’m on my own and I’m coming up to a marshall. They shouted at me which way to go, I went in the direction I thought they said and they had to shout back that I’d gone the wrong way, I had to turn around and mumbled a few unpleasant words. After that my faith in the marshalls went right down. At each turn I started physically pointing and asking which turn I had to take.

I came to a turn at about 4 miles and the marshall shouted something but I wasn’t sure what it was. I headed down a path but wasn’t 100% it was the right way. The course was supposed to be marked out with glow sticks but I didn’t see one for a few minutes, I began to think the worst.

 As I started to think that I was lost, there was a moment where I think logic evaded me. It might have just been that I was tired and not the fact that I thought I had gone the wrong way and was lost. There was a single moment that I thought if I was lost then I would stay in the same spot and wait to be found, until I realised that I could just turn around I go back in the direction I had come in.

Coming across the finish

Turns out that I wasn’t lost and I hadn’t gone down the wrong path. The glow sticks started appearing again and I had started to gain on the person in front of me. I could see the finish up ahead to switched on the after-burners and tried to catch up the guy in front. I pushed as hard as I could but left it too late. I wasn’t too disappointed though as I had still come 9^th   (out of ~250), easily my highest finish in a race.

9^th place, lessons learnt and an enjoyable first race in the dark, all topped off with a toffee apple at the finish because it’s so close to Halloween.  

Is the Government doing enough to tackle obesity?

The number of obese and overweight people across the UK is incredible; nearly 70% of the population now fill this category. Yet the government does not appear to be facing up to this issue and trying to reduce the high numbers of deaths linked to obesity each year. Compare this to the number of deaths caused by things like drink driving or smoking and how much government money has gone into reducing these and it doesn’t look like we’ve been getting value for money.

Drink driving and speeding

Everyone has seen that drink driving advert with the barman playing all the different roles and playing out that other bloke’s life if he has another drink, I bet most people even know all the words (I know I do!). Or what about those adverts about speeding with the little girl saying “if you hit me at 30mph....” in that cute voice that makes you feel guilty about speeding. I haven’t got exact figures but I bet these campaigns weren’t cheap.

"....So, what's it going to be?"



So, given the effort by the government, you would think that this is a major contributor to the number of deaths in the UK each year, easily in the thousands. Yet, the total number is only in the low hundreds.

What about smoking?



This images are shocking, would you buy a McDonalds
if similar pictures were on their packets?



Smoking has long been a big problem in the UK and comes with lots of bad consequences, just like obesity. It accounts for around 80000-100000 deaths in the UK. To reduce this, the government seems to have done an awful lot; there have been TV adverts, there are those disgusting pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packets and there is even a smoking ban in workplaces. This amount of effort to reduce the number of smokers is, no doubt, an expensive measure, a lot more money seems to be spent on this than has been spent on the issue of obesity.

I don’t want to get into a huge moral debate about what lives are more valuable than others nor am I saying that the money spent on these campaigns has been wasted.

So, what’s being done about obesity?

As I’ve already said, 70% of the UK’s population is now overweight or obese. That’s nearly 70% of the population that have an increased risk of coronary heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes and even some cancers. Over time, and even already, this will put a huge strain on the NHS.  Cardiovascular disease is the single largest killer in the UK and it has been proven through research time and time again that those that are physically fit reduce their risk. Why then, are the government not doing much to get Britain active?

On the official Number 10 website, the PM’s official page, not once does it mention reducing obesity as a priority. In terms of sport, the only priority seems to be hosting a successful Olympic games. Speaking of the Games, was this not supposed to be a springboard to get the UK into sport? I don’t think there has been any sort of surge in numbers taking part in sport or even more people interested in the Olympics.



The Change 4 Life campaign,
with the jelly baby people



I had thought that there was no government backed campaign to improve the health of the UK from exercise and a better diet. When doing some research though, I stumbled on the “Change for Life” campaign. Can you remember it? Their adverts have got what I think look like jelly baby people. I think the biggest testament to the success of this campaign is the fact that I, and probably you, could not even remember it, never mind any of the information it is giving.

I think it’s pretty clear that obesity is a big problem in the UK (no pun intended) and that something has to be done. What’s clearer is that the UK government is not delivering.

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Are there some people who will never care about their health?

We all know people that don’t exercise. We all know people who live their lives on a bad diet. Some of them are overweight and some are those ones that never put on weight no matter what they eat or how little they exercise. For the latter, it can be quite easy to think that because they are not overweight that they are relatively “healthy”. Fact is they are probably not. If your diet is poor and you’re not exercising, your health is suffering, regardless of the size of your belly.

Of these people that we all know who don’t exercise, ever, why is it that they cannot summon themselves of the sofa and out for a jog or down a local sports club or...just...well...anything. And what about those with a poor diet? Why don’t they put down that processed meal and eat something fresh or swap their takeaways for something that’s..... not a take-away? My question (a little like the title suggests) is; are there some people who will just never care about their health?

Some examples

Have a little think about some of the people you know who don’t exercise, do they fit into one of these? The bloke who used to play team sports until ~40 and hasn’t exercised since he finished? That person who never liked P.E. in school and has just never exercised, someone who is overweight and uses that as a reason why they can’t exercise or the office worker that says that they just haven’t got the time. 

What about the people whose diet reads with more Mc’s and ready’s than perhaps it should. We all know the mum without the time to make a dinner from scratch, the person who seems to always get a takeout or someone who would only ever get their 5-a-day in if banana milkshakes, cherry drops and strawberry ice cream counted.

Can they Change?

There are some people who yo-yo diet or that once a year might get into the gym. Forget those; we’re not interested, not today anyway. The people that we’re interested in are the ones that never do anything. Not a single thing.

Some people seem stubborn about not exercising and healthy eating. I’ve met more than one person who thinks it’s, and I quote, “sad” to lead a healthy life and that their unhealthy ways provide them with a much happier time on earth. Really? I’m not going to go and get the chez long and go all psychiatrist on you, but can anyone really say that a lifestyle is “sad” without ever trying it. I used to think that running seemed boring and, well to cut a long story short, I’m now out pounding the streets most days in the week.

Excuses

It’s not just stubbornness that is keeping some people unhealthy; there are a lot of excuses that people chuck about. Time, money, effort....the list could go on.  But would these people use these excuses if they knew some of the facts?

Just 15 minutes of low intensity exercise a day can increase your life expectancy by 3 years. 15 minutes!!! Who can’t find 15 minutes a day to live longer? And that’s just one benefit of exercise. I’m not going to list all of the benefits here but would people make more of an effort if this sort of information was out there? I don’t think they would.

Is all lost?

Are some people unreachable, beyond hope? Are there some in the bewilderment of healthy lives, cast away in a world of gluttony, slobbery and laziness? I’m going to leave it here for know and let you think. I want to hear your thoughts. Can anyone do anything to change things? Do things need to change? Let me know at the bottom.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Toning Trainers and Barefeet Running

Last week Reebok were fined $25 million because of false claims about their “toning” trainers http://bit.ly/nVBEvs. Then at the end of the week a small study was released claiming that more than half of the women studied showed no benefit from wearing barefoot running shoes http://nyti.ms/o792cP. So, I thought I’d shed some light on the situations and give you my thoughts about these two different types of products and whether they are worth your money.

“Toning” Trainers?

So far I’ve called them “toning” trainers but from here on out they shall be referred to as, “Rounded-Underneath’s-Bought-By-Idiots-Seeking-Health (or rubbish) trainers. Reebok seem to have muscled their way in to a market that has been about for a couple of years. These “rubbish” trainers have been around for a while, each with the same principle; by having a rounded, unstable sole the trainers are supposed to make your leg muscles work harder when you walk to keep you balanced. Reebok came in, put the fantastic body of Kelly Brook at the front of a big advertising campaign and have sold quite a few of these trainers. And I’m not surprised; the suggestion of a body like Kelly’s just by wearing a pair of trainers is an attractive offer for most women.

The Problem

Reebok have been fined because their claims of your muscles working harder have been false. However, even if their claims were true, I would still advise people to take steer clear of these “rubbish” trainers. The selling point of them is an age-old method of selling anything in the health and fitness sector – do less and get better results.

But let’s think about it, even if these trainers make your muscles work harder, when would you wear them, to work with your office wear? I don’t think your boss would be impressed with your new casual look? Would you wear them for all of your outside of work activities, when all your short journeys are taken by car? The point is most people would only wear these trainers at one specific time, their dedicated exercise time.

Swap exercise for walking?

So, you’ve started wearing the trainers and you’re going for some walks. Great, I’m not going to say anything bad about someone willing to try to exercise and improve the health and fitness. I will say though that it is naive to think that, because you’re wearing your brand-spanking-new-give-me-a-body-like-Kelly-Brook trainers, all you have to do is walk and you will give your muscles a workout.



"Wow, if I get some of these trainers, I could look like that?" Um, no!



Bottom line

You will not get a Kelly Brook bum (no pun on the subheading intended) by wearing these rubbish trainers. You will by exercising.

Barefoot shoes

In the running community barefoot running is growing in popularity. The theory goes that we are biologically wired to run barefooted. In however many 1000s years BC, man hunted and man’s advantage over beast was that man could run and run and run and run and.....you get the picture. Usain Bolt can run 100m in around 9.5 seconds. In the animal kingdom this is embarrassingly average.  Patrick Makau  ran the Berlin marathon in 2 hours 3 minutes and 38 seconds. Not many animals could match that. Humans were made to run and we have ran barefooted for thousands of years.

Man no like soft, cushioned foot thing

I've always thought my toes would be happier if they were
seperated and hugged, individually by my running shoes

Along came the commercial world and they said, when running cushion your feet, our trainers will save your joints. Trainers were built up and today you can buy all manner of shoe to make it feel like you’re running on pillows. The fad now though is switching back to minimalist. The reason is that this way your joints will be spared of huge forces and pressure. This happens as you switch from striking the ground with your heel, as you do in cushioned trainers, to striking the ground with the ball of your foot as you run.

Do they work?

The study that I linked to at the beginning looked only at the Vibram FiveFingers but most of these shoes follow the same principle; they are light and thin, offer little cushion and support and are basically there to stop you cutting your feet on the ground. In my opinion there are too many positive things coming out about these shoes for me to think they aren’t worth the hype. I haven’t tried them myself but I am very, very tempted to.

 In the study the half that continued to heel strike first when wearing the FiveFingers were doubling the impact compared to traditional trainers. But, those who switched to a forefront strike reduced the impact compared to traditional trainers.

One of the reasons why half of the women saw no benefit has been said to be that they made no effort to modify their form. A conscious effort may be needed to change your form and adjust to the minimalist shoe. It was suggested that the transition from traditional to minimalist shoe was slow and progressive to ensure that the correct form and technique developed.

Summary

So, let’s conclude. Reeboks “rubbish” trainers probably (maybe even definitely) won’t give you a bum like Kelly Brook. Minimalist shoes might not help you reduce the impact when running straight away but will do if you take the transition to these shoes slowly and make a conscious effort to change your form.

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Ways to stay unfit and ruin your fitness plan

Are you happy with having a tyre around your stomach? Do you want your weight loss program to fail? Is your fitness training just too fun and giving you too much personal satisfaction? Then look no further, we have the definitive list of ways to make your programs fail.

Do the same type of exercise all of the time

Cross train to avoid injury? No thanks. Mix up training intensity to hit different physiological systems and different types of fitness? Nah, not us. Try a completely different sport/exercise program if you’re getting bored? Don’t think so. For us that want to fail, we’re going to do the same thing until we’re blue in the face. And then we’re going to do it some more.

Don’t match your diet to your personal aims

Want to lose weight? Get a huge fix of calories each day. Looking to gain muscle? Green leaf salad twice a day is plenty. Training more than once a day? Forget recovery food, train your starved muscles to the max. To make sure we fail we don’t need to bother thinking about what we eat in terms of our goals. We definitely don’t need advice from people who know better than us, advice is for wimps.

Never Warm-up

Who needs to get their heart rate up slowly? What’s the point of getting blood to the muscle’s where it’s needed before training/performance? Do your muscles need warming-up, stretched a little? Do they heck. Feel the ping as your cold, stiff muscles snap by going from nothing to all out max by missing a warm-up. Warm-ups take all of 5 minutes which is way too much time to take out of our incredibly busy lives.

Not warming-up? Why bother cooling-down

When we’re done, we’re done. There’s no point in helping the body recovery so it’s ready for next time. Help get rid of all that lactic acid that’s built up in the muscles? Start to repay that oxygen debt? Those things are for mugs. The next time we train/perform, our aching, tired and unrecovered muscles will be grateful for not doing a cool down.

Train in unsuitable clothes

Office suits are great for race-wear

Trainers that are suitable for your feet and for your exercise? Reflective clothing at night? Comfortable clothes that aren’t restrictive? Why bother? You can’t beat combinations like jeans and flip flops for cycling, your work suit for weight lifting and short skirts and heels for trail running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggXmKPMaHMo

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Honey, I blew up the kids

A lot has been written in the last few years about the way the way there are more obese children than there previously have been. Everyone has been bombarded with reasons and fingers have been cast at who is to blame. The hard fact is that, if you are overweight, your children are more likely to be overweight and if your kids become overweight, they are more likely to remain overweight throughout adulthood. The key is to do the right things early on in their lives. I’m sorry for the clichés and bad sayings but, a leopard never changes its spots and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. If you have brought your children up in a certain way that has seen them put on weight then it will be very difficult to then try to convince them to change.

So, how old are we talking and what sort of things should you be doing?

Well, first of all I’m not saying anything radical or extreme like all 1 year olds should do sit-ups or new-borns should on a salad diet. There are certain things that you can do though.

Ditch the buggy

Once your child is 2 or 3 and are confident walkers, encourage them to walk as much as possible. Start to use any sort of push chair sparingly when you’re out and about. Walking is a fantastic, gentle exercise for your spawn of your loins, as well as yourself.

You can’t beat sleep

Sleep is vital for kids’ growth and development. A lack of sleep can also lead to eating more during the day. Try to get them into a routine of going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. Having a warm bath 90 minutes before bed can help soothe them into a peaceful night’s sleep without the need of counting sheep. Avoid them having anything sugary a couple of hours before bed as this can make kids hyper and less likely to settle into the land of nod.

Don’t use food as a reward

If you start to use food as a reward (all you “if you be good, we can go to McDonalds” parents, you know who you are) your kids will start to see these sorts of foods as treats and use them as their go-to food when they want something they enjoy. Next time they start to feel down, they’ll hit the junk food you gave them as a treat to try and cheer themselves up. Why not use a family day out as a treat or create a rewards and penalties chart and make them work up towards those football boots or bike that they want so much.

Let them watch Scooby Do and Lazy Town, not Charlie and Lola, apparently

The Department of Health has released a list of kids programmes which ranks the shows based upon how much physical activity is done by the main character, it’s great to see the hard-core issues being tackled. The group of Doctors, who were in all probability paid to do this, placed Scooby Do at the top of pile and Charlie and Lola were left slouching in last place. The full list is below;

1.       Sccoby Do

2.       Shaun the Sheep

3.       LazyTown

       4. Peppa Pig

       5.Bob the Builder

       6. Tom and Jerry

7. Dora the Explorer

8. Looney Tunes

9. sponge Bob Squarepants

10. In the Night Garden

11. Ben 10

12.  The Simpsons

13. Phineas and Ferb

       14. Sarah Jane Adventures

       15. Tracey Beaker

       16. Postman Pat

       17. iCarly

       18. Horrid Henry

       19. Garfield

       20.  Charlie and Lola

 

Before we get into anything serious here I just want to say how funny it is that a group of adults who have gone through years of medical training have sat around a computer discussing whether Peppa Pig is more active than Sponge Bob Squarepants.

The important thing here isn’t the order of said list (which is completely wrong, how is Shaun the Sheep more active than the forever running Tom and Jerry or the walking delivery man that is Postman Pat?). The important thing is why is there a list at all. Surely the message should be “try to cut down how much tele your children watch”, and not, “watch Scooby Do because he runs a lot”. Actually, isn’t this the same Scooby Do that constantly talks about eating and eats all manner of food without eer gaining weight? Sorry, again, that’s beside the point. It’s a struggle to work out how such a “study” (that term is used very, very loosely) gained funding, or publication. It offers nothing of any use to the public, parent’s behaviours will not be affected and it will do nothing to help get kids active. Why not promote kids watching sport on tele, or, crazier still, why not promote actual physical activity for kids. Watching Scooby Do will not help your kids 2-5 how to live a healthy lifestyle, having well-informed parents will. Why not publish a list of 20 alternate ways to entertain your child whilst you are doing the house work or whatever else you may need to get on with. Something like playing in the garden, a small enclosed trampoline?

So, turn off the tele (even if it is Scooby Do), ditch your buggy , help them get a full nights kip and stop using food as a reward and your kids will be on the right path to a healthy lifestyle.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Little Bit Extra

So, I’m sure wondering how I’ve been getting on has cost you some sleepless nights lately. Well, worry over, I’m about to tell you. After finally getting my girlfriend to come running with me, the next day she followed me on the bike as I did an interval run. All she was missing was a mega-phone and a spatula. I had the last laugh though as the ancient bike has the most uncomfortable seat in the history of bike seats and so she was struggling to walk afterwards due to a sore derriere.

Not sure if she is planning to do a triathlon or something but the next morning we hit the swimming baths. I’m not sure at what point you become serious at swimming training and switch to the Speedo. Whatever that point is, I’m not there, I’ll stick to the shorts. Swimming went well though and it was good to get a bit of cross training.

Saturday I had  a football match (we lost) and Sunday was a rest day. Monday I went for a tempo run and led me to a question. What is the etiquette for a runner when going past another runner? Casual nod? A smile? High five? I went past a few people on this run. As I saw them coming I thought I’d go with a smile and “alright?”. I thought that would be the most polite thing. As they past I flashed the smile and was about to open my mouth to speak, when I realised I was being blanked. Is that bad runner etiquette? Surely it is.

Anyway Tamworth 10k is the next race I’m entered in. Less than 3 weeks to go. By the weekend I’ll have a good idea for a target time.

Thanks for getting down to here.

Wierd Ways to a Better Body

Sorry for the longer than usual gap between the last post and this one. The reasons are because my last post was a Guest Post for the “me, exactly weightloss blog” by Erin Weem at http://meexactly.blogspot.com ( check it out, it’s very good) and then after that I have been away in Palma for a few days.

While I was in Palma, racking my brain as it crisped in the sun or another blog idea, a new blog topic literally fell from the sky. I was in one of those generic, foreign water parks with over-priced entrance, water slides, “dad pants” and at least 2/3 people slipping over on the wet floor. They had a Diving show that they were showing a few times throughout the day and I decided to go and have a watch. While I was in the queue before it started, two men were walking around in speedos. I agree, in normal circumstances, in a water park, men in speedos wouldn’t be so strange or noteworthy. However, these particular men had airbrushed bodies; tanned, waxed and toned to perfection. I am not trying to reveal a guy-crush across the platform of the world wide web. The point I want to raise is that this is something perhaps people would not think about, a sport like diving to get fit. I am not sure what training divers have to endure (if you do then please feel free to let the rest of us know in the comments) but it is obviously physically demanding enough to produce well toned bodies.

Would you normally think about diving as a way to keep fit? Or a way to lose weight? The guys doing the diving were great at what they did; they put on a great show and looked good technically, but the best thing was that they looked like they enjoyed it.

After the water park and the Diving show, I went to a diner show in the evening. And, low-and-behold, I was presented with another example of a weird way to keep fit. The “Pirates” show that I watched was full of dance, gymnastics and contortionists that were all incredibly fit and athletic. The dancing girls did high tempo routines that would tire most people; the gymnasts could bend and fold as if being shaped by someone doing origami and the contortionists had superhuman core strength. The  contortionists in particular really impressed me; what they could do obviously takes hours and hours of training each day. Again, the point is, these are three ways that you may not associate with fitness or first think of if you were to try and get fit/lose weight.

The contortionists at the Pirate Show looked incredibly toned and showed unbeleivable strength doing things like this

I’m not saying we should all go out and try diving/dancing/gymnastics/contortion, but why not? Or, why not something similar?

Little Bit Extra

So , what’s been going on with me?

Went on an easy 5 mile run on Tuesday morning. Does anyone else listen to podcasts and laugh out loud, only to get weir d looks from the people you go past? It happened quite a few times today.

Had a football match in the evening, won 4-2 playing with 10 men for the second half. Very tired afterwards so made sure I had a good stretch and a cold shower after the game.

Wednesday, something unbelievable happened. After over a year of trying, I finally got my girlfriend to come running with me. It helped show me the struggles some people might have if they try to get fit and how they might quit early on. My girlfriend really struggled and we had to stop a few times. We managed to go 2 miles altogether and I am really proud. I do empathise with people who might struggle now, despite all the best intentions. What I think it did as well was to show me how important a supporting friend is. She may well have stopped sooner if I wasn’t there encouraging and saying how well she was doing.

So, if you are the struggling new comer, ask a fitter friend to go with you, whatever activity you want to do. Or, if you’re that fitter friend, think about encouraging friends to start exercising, go with them and offer advice.

Hope this was a little better than last time, if not, you know where the blog stops and this starts, just look for the footsteps.

Do the Little Things Make a Difference

 Outrage has begun to descend across Britain as the U.S. has begun to meddle with a British favourite, HP sauce. This trademark British condiment is to have its recipe change in order to comply with a pledge signed by U.S. company Heinz to reduce salt and fat levels in food. This has left some of Britain furious, saying that it has changed the taste.

Heinz have reduced the salt content of the recipe in compliance with the pledge they signed, the overall aim of which is the government’s hope to reduce the amount of salt people eat by 1 gram per day. It has been estimated that this could save the NHS £46m a year within 3 years. I am not sure what calculation was used to work that figure out and I feel sorry for the person who was handed the task of working that one out. Maybe he/she thought they were being asked how much money Arsenal should have sold Fabregas for.

There can be no denying that something needs to be done in order to reduce British health problems. But what people have taken issue with is that the taste has been sacrificed for the sake of a small reduction in salt. If you think how much sauce a person has each time they have some and then how often they have sauce, does it really make a difference how much salt is in our HP sauce?

This does indeed seem such a small, insignificant difference. If you imagine that nothing else changes in a person’s life other than the salt content in their HP sauce goes down a little then yes that is an insignificant difference. They might be putting that sauce on a greasy fry-up that could feed a family of 5. But if the salt content in their sauce goes down, they park in the furthest space from the shop instead of the nearest so they have to walk a little, they have less sugar in their tea or coffee....the little things soon turn into a big thing. By changing lots of little things you would be surprised how much you could improve your lifestyle. You will not shift stone after stone or inch over inch over night, but your long term health will improve gradually. Part of the problem is that too many people have too many little bad habits like parking close to the shops or taking the lift not the stairs or eating larger than necessary portions. It could be that the build of all these little things is what has lead to a person being overweight.

So is our HP sauce worth the sacrifice? No? What about the weekly Chinese? Things like this can be seen as a sacrifice to your life in order to improve your health. But if you are overweight then some “sacrifices” have to be made. But is it a sacrifice to have a something else or do something else. I do not want to go into something completely different but it may be that people aren’t sacrificing taste or convenience by switching what they eat and what they do, just their habit. If you do something every day for most of your life and then someone tells you that you need to stop, it probably will feel like a sacrifice.

The point is, yes HP sauce tastes different and the difference in salt is slightly insignificant. But something has to change in order to make the population healthier. There is too much food out there with high salt or fat or sugar and people just accept it. If everyone changes some of the little things, they may end up surprised by the big difference they might see in their health.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Little Bit Extra

I’ve decided to keep you all in the loop about my own health and fitness. At the minute I play football (soccer if you’re American) and I enter a few long distance races. I’ve always played football but only just started running. I’m hoping to move from a middle of the pack runner to a front runner in these races. Come along for the ride as I tell you about all the runs I get up to, my recovery and let’s see if I can get better. So....let’s get started.

I have just got back from Palma where I enjoyed a great 4 day break. Unfortunately, despite my best intentions and me taking my running trainers, I only went on one run and it was only 1 mile long. Poor showing I know. The day I got back, I went on a run that I planned to be 6 miles but I only managed 3 as my calf was in agony. Bit of RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation) the rest of the day yesterday and then I’m going to see how it is during an easy run this morning then I’ve got a football match tonight.

Sorry that it wasn’t terribly exiting this time. But stick with me, next time there’ll be more stuff to read I promise.

Is your high maintenance hair making you pile on the pounds?

The secret to your weight problems may not be what you eat, your genes or metabolism, as some leading scientific research would suggest. No, the reason could be in the shape of heated metal-plated tongs (aka hair straighteners) or in the shape of hot air blowing devices (aka hair dryers). This is what U.S. Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin. Those who spend hours on their hair are apparently less likely to exercise than those who spend seconds.

Evidence

If a U.S. Surgeon General is ready to cast aside the widely held beliefs of the causes of obesity or weight gain (or actual FACTS) and instead throw in a new, radical approach to the obesity epidemic plaguing both the U.S. and the U.K. where we attack it one hair styling product at a time, then surely she must be backed up with some research or study. Well apparently not. The claim seems entirely based on her own experiences;

“Often you get women saying, “I can’t exercise today because I don’t want to sweat my hair back or get my hair wet”, she was quoted as saying.

 So, no hard figures on the number of women who won’t exercise in fear of ruining a well crafted barnet, no findings on the impact that this had on women’s desire to exercise in comparison to other factors, just the claims of one doctor who has had a few women through hers doors who are reluctant to exercise and have probably blurted out more than one excuse. I think we all know that person who you’re all waiting for when you’re going out, their hair is sculpted to perfection, but they’ve had stylists commissioned and they’ve been doing it for the last 8 hours. But does this happen every day? Would these people actually not exercise in case they messed up their hair?

Contradiction

A lot of people who spend a lot of time on their hair are image conscious. So is it accurate to say that someone would obsess with their hair but then completely disregard the gut? I would say the answer to this is yes and no.  I know people who don’t exercise, are overweight but still put a lot of effort into their hair. On the other hand, I know people who are very image conscious that exercise vigorously to get a perfect body as well as spending many nights annoying friends who wait on whilst they do their hair. My point is, I don’t think Regina Benjamin has a valid point. What she says is happening I could only imagine seeing on an episode of The Only Way is Essex. People who do not exercise will often find reasons not to. I have not seen the full interview with her, only what was printed on an online article. It may be that this was one of many things that Regina said but the article just put an interesting slant on what she said. If this is the case I apologise to her if she had made valid comments and can only slam the writer of the article for putting a nonsense spin on it.

There is an obesity problem in the U.K. and U.S. FACT. There are lots of underlying reasons behind this. FACT. Hair straighteners, hair dryers and a large group of women who are not willing to mess up their hair during exercise are part of the reason. NONSENSE

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

Having an end goal

This post follows on a little from yesterday’s post, “The measure of success”. I said how you should use as many ways as possible to measure how well your diet or fitness plan goes. But what happens when you 3 months in and you’ve lost a little weight, your resting heart rate has lowered a little, the blood pressure has gone from bursting to healthy and you’re jeans are a little looser? How can you stay motivated to keep going, to carry on the good work? That’s where the all important end goal comes in.

An end goal is something to aim towards, something you look back on and say “I did that”. But an end goal isn’t “I will lose 3 stone in two months” or “I will go down 2 dress sizes”. They are things that will happen along the way. When you step on the scales and see that you have reached your target weight, you may be happy, but there is no moment of elation, no huge moment of triumph. It’s just you, in your bathroom, staring at the ground. Compare that feeling to crossing the finish line at the end of a marathon, or a 50 mile cycling race, open water swimming event or triathlon. The end goal doesn’t have to be a race though; it can be training for a sports team and finally playing competitively for the first time since you were in school. These events create moments of pure joy, elation and are something that you remember for the rest of your life.

Sound impossible? That’s part of the point. By doing something that you thought was impossible, you feel even better, for that one moment, you feel invincible.

So, how do you do it?

In small steps. First, you need to pick the goal and then give yourself a realistic amount of time to do it. If it’s some sort of race event (running, cycling, swimming or triathlon) do a little research. There a literally thousands of races out there: beginners’ races, fun races, small local events, huge national events. Pick one that you like the look of and gives you enough time to train and then enter it. Don’t think about booking it or say you’ll train and then book it. Just book it. Then there’s no whimping out. The same with a sports team; just take the plunge and find out about training with a club. No club will turn down a player because they are unfit or have not played in a few years (well apart from professional teams I can’t imagine you can just stroll up to a premiership football team and ask to train).

So, you’ve taken the plunge. The event is entered or the training session has been planned. Now what? Train. Get ready and put the work in.

Need a little more motivation? Then raise money for charity. Do something good for you and something good for lots of other people. That way, when you’re struggling in training, you have that little bit more incentive not to give up. And when you cross the line, you feel twice as good knowing you have helped so many people.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle

The measure of success

How do you measure the success of your diet or your fitness plan or even how healthy your lifestyle is? Is it weight? Dress size? BMI maybe? Well what about resting heart rate or blood pressure or even fun?

From a poll of people that I questioned, 60% used weight as the measure of their success and 75% used dress size or the fitting of their clothes. No one used fun or enjoyment of what they were doing, no one used resting heart rate and only 5% used blood pressure. When I asked people why they use dress size or weight and not some of the other measures, they told me that these were the ones that are easiest measured, it makes sense; everyone can stand on something, look at a number and see if it’s gone up or down since the last time they stood there or if their jeans are a little tighter than the last time they wore them. They also said that they do not really understand what some of the others were or how to measure them.

Is there an issue with using weight and dress size/fitting of clothes as how we measure how well our diet or fitness plan is? One of the problems with using weight is that your weight fluctuates on an hourly basis due to movement of fluid. If you were to weigh yourself before you went to bed and then as soon as you woke up, you would see a difference of a few pounds (which is why if you do weigh yourself you should limit it to about once a week). The other problem with just using weight is how easy it is to shift weight to begin with but then how difficult it can become. I’ve described in another post how you initial lose water and then fat and muscle. Once your weight lose starts to slow down it can be disheartening and it’s at that point that people tend to change to another diet or another fitness plan. Weight is not something that should be ignored, it is important to monitor, but not too often and in line with other measures.

I’m not going to say too much about clothes size. Only that, why not go a little further and take actual body measurements? Hips, arms, thigh, chest, calves, anything that you can get a tape measure around. This way, even if your weight has started to level off, you might still see that you’re slimming down.

So weight and dress size taken care of. What about some other things we can use to measure how healthy we are/ how well our diet is working. Do you think we should take a look at our heart, see how the little ticker is getting on? Resting heart rate and blood pressure are easy ways to check out the health of our heart. Without putting on too much of a biology lesson, the more your heart works, the bigger it gets (like any other muscle). Then once it’s bigger on the inside, it can fill up with more of that fantastic red stuff than it used to, so it doesn’t have to beat as quickly. So, the slower your resting heart rate, the bigger your heart is. Don’t know how to measure your resting heart rate? Take a look at this http://bit.ly/dxux6J  . What about blood pressure? When your heart beats, it pumps blood round your body to give it the energy and oxygen it needs, keeping the inside of you happy. As the blood moves, it pushes against the sides of the blood vessels. The strength of this pushing is your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is too high, it puts extra strain on your arteries (and your heart) and this may lead to heart attacks and strokes (which is a bad thing). Finding your blood pressure is not as simple as finding your resting heart rate. First of all, it needs what is possibly the most difficult thing to pronounce ever, a sphygmomanometer (just as hard to spell as it is to say).  The easiest thing is to go to your doctor who can take your blood pressure, if you want to do it yourself though, http://bit.ly/hujCvY check out this website. It’s got lots of information about blood pressure and how to measure it yourself.

Resting heart rate and blood pressure are just two more ways you can check how well you are getting on in getting a little fitter and a little healthier. It’s important to use quite a lot of ways because our body is complex. Your diet and training affects a lot of things and so just because you’ve stopped losing weight or you’re not getting as thin as quickly as you were, does not mean what you are doing is not working. Measuring lots of things means that what you are doing is being better assessed. Just because you have stopped losing weight does not mean what you are doing is not working. But, if you measure lots of thing and none of them are showing signs of improvement, chances are something needs changing.

The last thing that you should use to measure your success is fun and enjoyment. If you don’t like what you’re doing, don’t do it. There is no point putting yourself through things you don’t enjoy just to get fit or lose weight. There are lots of ways to get fit and lots of tasty healthy foods. If running and green salads sounds like living hell to you, find something else. Things may not be fun all the time, but they should be most of the time. Just a word of warning though, fun does not necessarily mean easy. Like my old French teacher used to say, if it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing.....hey, I just got that.

Thanks for making it to the bottom. Please feel free to make comments on any of the posts. If you like what you’re reading then please subscribe to the blog. For daily health and fitness tips, links and more follow us on twitter at @FSLifestyle