Healthy Carbs

Carbohydrates are not all created equal. When it comes to staying lean, you actually do need a certain amount of carbs in your diet on a regular basis. Don’t forget that anything taken to extreme can be bad for us but in moderation, we can enjoy carbs and they should be part of a well-balanced diet. Let’s take a look at what they do in the body.

Healthy Carbs Keep your Body’s Systems Running Smoothly

One basic piece of information that many health enthusiasts forget is that our bodies utilize carbohydrates to make glucose, which is the fuel that gives us energy and keeps our systems all functioning. Yes, it is possible for us to get that energy from fats and proteins but there’s no reason not to get them from some healthy foods containing carbohydrates. Certain systems actually crave those foods.

When we eat these foods, they are digested and turned into blood sugar (glucose). Our bodies can use that sugar/energy right away or store it in the liver and muscles for later use. Your brain, red blood cells and nerve cells cannot adequately use any other form of energy. If you go too long without carbs, you may experience brain fog and not be able to think clearly.

Glucose does a few other things in the body too. In the liver and muscles, carbs end up as stored glycogen, which is essential for maintaining blood sugar when you don't eat. If you’re planning an intense work out, then it’s important to have those carbs; they will equip you to enjoy a much better work out.

Eliminate the Junk Food but Keep the Good Stuff

The problem comes when we eat too many of the wrong carbs. Regardless of your age or health, it’s never a good idea to consistently eat things like donuts, bagels and rolls. Though we do need a few carbs each day in order to maintain brain and muscle health, eating a regular diet rich in processed carbohydrates such as white flour, white sugar or high fructose corn syrup will overwhelm your body with junk that it was never designed to process.

Keep the good carbs in your regular diet for best results in any fitness and health program. These include fresh vegetables, legumes, and raw fruit. In moderation, you can also enjoy whole grains, nuts, and sweet potatoes. Sometimes these foods actually have more positive side effects than negative. Let’s take the sweet potato for instance.

Sweet potatoes are rich in complex carbs, beta carotene, fiber, potassium, manganese, vitamin C, and vitamin B6. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. This is also true for most nuts, fruits and vegetables. Our bodies need these foods to function properly and we can still get those excellent results that we’re looking for in our fitness program.

 A great exercise, health and fitness program is all about balance and common sense.

Transform your Life with Cardio Exercise!

There are a number of excellent cardio exercises that we can all do both inside and outside the gym. Exercise can and should be fun. Each of us has our own favorite activities and yours may be running, biking, swimming, dancing or even walking. If you are especially athletic, then you might try boxing. Step classes can be a great way to meet some new friends.

Learn the Secret to a Consistent Cardio Routine

Nothing like a solo run sometimes to
clear the mind and blast away the cobwebs!

The real secret to finding those cardio exercises that will work best for you lies in understanding what activities you find most enjoyable. Older athletes may simply take a brisk 20 minute walk each day, but if your passion is mountain biking, then go for it. Find something that you really enjoy and make some new friends who also enjoy this activity and your cardio workout will always be fun and adventurous.

Explore the Healthy Benefits

Any large group of muscles that contracts rhythmically over time, will burn fuel to keep that movement up. This equates to weight loss as well as muscle toning. When we get our heart rate up and keep it up for at least 20 minutes per day, we’re promoting healthy heart and lung function. Much of the recent research indicates that these types of cardio exercises also help with ailments like brain fog, depression, stress, insomnia, and low self-esteem.

Cardio activities and most other types of exercise release chemicals in our brains call endorphins. By interacting with the receptors in our brain, these endorphins can reduce pain and give us a light, positive feeling of well-being. Some people have described the feeling to that of being on morphine. That’s why exercising can become so addictive to some individuals.

Real Change is Possible

Cardio does all this while improving the condition of your cardiovascular system - heart, lungs, blood vessels and keeping your blood and cells oxygenated. When you consider all the benefits of cardio exercise, you can quickly see why it’s a great addition to any work-out program. Discover what works best for you and you can move into a whole new healthy lifestyle where you’re finally in control of your health.

In the next blog, we’ll zero in on carbs and find out all the good and bad stuff about these controversial foods.

Exercise with others outdoors promotes feelings of happiness
as well as better fitness, researchers say

Examining the Myths Surrounding Carbs and Cardio

Each year, once the New Year’s festivities are over, most of us run out to the gym, determined to work hard and get back in shape as quickly as possible. After having all those delicious desserts and exotic drinks at holiday parties, we can see the change in our bodies. Jeans don’t fit right anymore and love handles suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere.

If you are one of those diligent people who stuck with it and lost every single kilo of body fat, then kudos to you. Most of us worked out for a month or so and then fell back into our old, comfortable routine. Let’s face it though … we all want to look great in our favourite shorts or swimming cossie, so maybe it’s time to take another shot at getting in shape.

Are All Carbs Bad for You?

Many of the 10-week course graduate personal trainers will quickly tell you that all carbs are evil and should be completely avoided. The human body does require healthy foods containing carbs though. One rule of thumb that should always be observed with any diet and exercise program is not to become so radical that you actually harm your body.

A good balance in our eating habits can be achieved where we enjoy some foods containing carbohydrates (bread, grains, pasta, rice, fruits etc) on a regular basis. Of course, use common sense and good judgment, but don’t spurn any food with carbs. For instance, fresh fruit, especially items like apples and grapes, are healthy, nutritious and they keep your bowels working properly.

Cardio Workouts

Cardio is another area where things can easily get out of hand. Some exercise enthusiasts are sternly against cardio workouts. Unless you work at a very physical job each day, then your body probably does need some cardio training on a daily basis. You can think of cardio training as a good, solid workout for your heart and lungs, and the heart is the most important muscle in your body. A little bit of huffing and puffing that gets your heart rate up each day will keep you cardiovascular system strong well into old age.

In the next blog, we’ll talk about the various types of cardio workouts that can benefit you. We will also discuss how effective they are at improving each area of our physique.  

Fitness: Why bother?

Good levels of fitness benefits everything from how you feel in the morning, how well you can perform sexually, to how long you’re going to live disease-free.

Since fitness only relates to how efficiently we use oxygen, a skinny person can be unfit whilst a fat person may be very fit.

Wait… why should I care about fitness if it doesn’t automatically mean being skinny?

Let’s look at what happens when you get fitter. As you slide up the fitness scale, one of the first things you’ll notice is that everything just feels easier. Hooray! 

Climbing stairs no longer puffs you out! Running to catch the bus feels like a breeze. For the same activity or sport after getting fit, you don’t need to breathe as hard nor your heart to beat as hard.

You’ll also be able to run faster, cycle harder or row further with a newer fitter body.

On the inside, you do some great things:

• Capillaries grow to deliver more blood to working muscles; 
• Heart health and strength improves; 
• Fat burning and blood sugar control get a boost.

Take a step back and you notice even better things. Large scientific studies show clearly that the fitter you are:

• The longer you live; and 
• The less likely you are to develop: 
• Cardiovascular disease 
• Diabetes 
• Kidney disease 
• Erectile dysfunction; and 
• Some mental health disorders. 
• You get lower blood pressure, reduced cholesterol, triglycerides and systemic inflammation.

So get fitter, even without losing weight and you can do more, feel better, have more energy, look better, feel more confident, last longer, reach more places, achieve more goals, live longer and enjoy life more. Why the hell wouldn’t you?

Fitness: Guess what? It has NOTHING to do with how much or little you weigh…

Fitness measures your ability to use oxygen, whilst weight management depends on calorie balance (calories in and out). In the body these are very different concepts. 

In actual fact:

• you can get fitter and actually gain weight: if you do lots of cardio & still overeat;
• you can lose weight and decrease fitness: if you stop exercising whilst dieting; 

OR

• you can happily lose weight and get fitter: with diet and exercise.

AND

• A fitter person has a much greater capacity to burn calories during exercise: like having a V12 engine compared to a 4-cylinder; BUT
• Has little advantage if they don’t use that capacity: like only driving your V12 to the shops on Sunday.
• Fitter doesn’t mean having a higher metabolism either.

A crap diet isn’t helping anybody’s weight, fit or not. You can still use fitness though to help you lose weight. Let’s put this in perspective: a very fit person may burn 1200 calories / hour running, compared to a very unfit person shuffling at 400 cal /hr.

They will feel the same sense of effort, and the fit person needs to only do one third the exercise time as the unfit person. Imagine how that could impact your weight loss goals!
 
How fitness affects your ability to burn fat
Apart from not burning as many calories during exercise, people with low levels of fitness have poor fat burning capacity, with their bodies choosing to burn more carbs instead. Boosting fitness changes the way cells work, allowing a person to burn a much higher proportion of fat both in exercise and at rest.

In my next post, We’ll explore more of the many benefits of being fit.

Fitness: You know you want it.

Did you know…

Being fat and fit is better than being skinny and unfit?

Being fit does not always equal being a buff and lean god or goddess?

So… what exactly is fitness? What does it mean, and why do we really want it?

Like staring at an everyday word on a page for too long until it stops making sense, in the next several blog posts I’m going to define the elusive concept of fitness and give you a heads up on just why it’s a gift everyone deserves, far from using it just in the search for the body beautiful.

So, what is it?

Fitness describes a characteristic of the human body. Like size, weight or height, it’s really just a scale. Where you sit on the scale comes down to one, slightly abstract, concept: “How well your body can use oxygen and fuels to produce energy.”

Fitness actually has little to do with weight management or appearance – two things we usually associate with being “fit”.

How it’s measured – a little bit of science

Like grams are to weight, fitness has a unit of measure too. Testing can let you work out your own fitness score: VO2max. This stands for “the maximum rate of oxygen (O2) Volume your body can use each minute.”

Your body needs oxygen to produce energy, by burning fuels like carbohydrates and fat (and less so, protein and alcohol).

In this day and age we don’t really ever run out of fuels so the limit to how much energy we produce is how much oxygen we can use.

It goes to say then that the fitter you are (higher VO2max) >> the more oxygen your body can use >> the more energy you can produce to move faster, go further, work harder or just feel more energetic!

On the flip side, very low fitness levels mean you can’t produce much energy at all - even simple physical tasks like climbing stairs puff you out easily.

How to measure your fitness

Fitness testing can be done at most gyms, health centres or even some GPs, with either maximal tests where you reach your hardest effort (VO2max testing) or a prediction (VO2peak) based on a few submaximal tests.

There are details of fitness tests you can do yourself too, available online – have a look at my website www.lifeactive.com.au for a few options.

Push Ups for Charity Wrap Up

What a great morning it was last Saturday 7th May when the Push Ups for Charity event finally got underway in the quest to raise money and awareness for Make A Wish foundation! 

We had a talk by Woolhara deputy mayor Peter Cavanagh, an inspiring message from Caz Lederman from Make A Wish Australia - and of course a whole bunch of enthusiastic participants psyched to bust out as many push ups as they could in 90 sec!

There were a standout number of pushups per person this time around with some obviously very fit and in shape participants. Special mentions to David Balassa and Pei-Ling Kong who took out the most number of push ups for a male and female respectively, at 109 and 94. Outstanding!

So far we have over $1300 raised so all in all a great effort :)