Finding optimal health – Diet, Sleep and Relaxation {www.progressionfitness.com.au}

To achieve optimal health and fitness, one must find balance in every aspect of your life.
Now as you all know from training with me, I’m all for training hard, pushing you to the limit, challenging your both physically and mentally during your training sessions. And you all know how much I love your effort and commitment. But today I am going to talk about ways that will compliment and improve other aspects of your life outside of training with me.
These tips on diet, sleep and relaxation you may already know and some of you probably couldn’t care less about any of it, but hopefully some of you will take at least one thing and be able to apply it to your everyday life.

DIET:
First and foremost with diet everyone is different and all people are programmed with different dietary needs, metabolic rates (the amount of energy being burned at rest, faster is better) and intolerances.
My 3 tips today for dietary requirements are:

How does insulin make me fat? {www.progressionfitness.com.au}

How does insulin make me fat?

Most people know when they are putting on weight as they have an area of your body that you notice it first appear. This will hopefully help you understand why this happens and why you can’t always burn off that access weight in your training program.
Insulin is the main player in fat storage here’s how it works.

What is insulin?
Insulin is a hormone that is released from the pancreas in response to elevated blood sugar (glucose).
Insulin is crucial to life in the proper amounts, but is detrimental in excessive amounts. Over half the population of the western world produce too much insulin because of their dietary standards.
Insulin’s primary role in the body is to keep blood sugar within a “comfort zone”. Throughout the day blood sugar rises and falls outside this comfort zone many times and when it does insulin is called upon to restore balance.

How does insulin work?
It is important that your blood sugar levels do not rise too high or too quickly. High blood sugar levels will alert the pancreas, the pancreas then detects this excess glucose and secretes insulin, which then lowers the blood sugar by shifting the metabolism into storage mode. Insulin coverts this excess glucose into glycogen (the stored form of glucose), removes it from the bloodstream and stores it in the liver and muscles. The excess blood sugar that cannot by stored as glycogen will be converted into new fat and stored in the adipose tissues (visibly on your hips, butt, back and man boobs) – everyone is different and generally has an area of your body that you first notice an increase in fat, women is normally thighs and men gut.

Excessive insulin release and weight gain:
While carbohydrates are a vital source of fuel for the body, if you eat too many of them, they will ultimately be stored as fat. The muscles are able to store three to four hundred grams of carbohydrate while the liver cans only store sixty to ninety grams. Once these levels have been reached, the carbohydrates are converted to fat and stored in the body’s fatty tissues. Also, if you eat foods that are high in carbohydrates, you will cause the body’s blood glucose levels to rapidly rise, and to compensate for this rise, insulin is secreted into the bloodstream in order to lower the blood glucose levels.
The issue with this is that higher levels of insulin prompts the body to store the excess carbohydrates as fat because it needs to be stored as quickly as possible, as well as telling it not to release any of the stored fat, meaning that you are unable to use existing stored fat as energy.  High insulin levels also suppress glucagon and growth hormones.  Glucagon promotes the burning of both fat and sugar by the body while growth hormone is used to build new muscle mass and also for muscle development.
Insulin also causes hunger and one of its nicknames is actually the “hunger hormone”.  This is because the blood sugar levels increase after a meal that contains carbohydrates, causing insulin to rise as well in order to lower blood sugar. This results in hunger (often only a couple of hours or less since your last meal) as your blood sugar levels are lower than what you need.  The more refined the carbohydrates you eat, the more extreme the response is. This is because refined carbohydrates lack the fibre that helps to minimise the insulin response – fibre causes the blood sugar levels to rise at a steadier rate.

Insulin resistance:
Insulin resistance is a huge problem that will have adverse affects with weight loss. In an average person, 40 percent of the carbohydrates that they consume are converted into fats. This percentage may be much higher in a person that is suffering from insulin resistance.
Some of the common complaints that are associated with insulin resistance are:

•    fatigue
•    difficulty concentrating or poor memory
•    low blood sugar
•    intestinal bloating
•    sleepiness
•    increased fat storage and weight
•    increased triglycerides
•    increased blood pressure
•    depression
•    in higher cases all of the above

What happens with insulin resistance is that the levels of insulin in the blood are similar or a little higher than a normal person’s, but the body’s cells become resistant to the insulin, causing the body to over-secrete insulin in order to feed the cells. The cells respond sluggishly to the glucose, causing blood sugar levels to be higher than they should be, and when the body cannot get the glucose into the cells, the extra energy is stored in fat cells, making it easy for insulin resistant people to gain weight but difficult for them to lose it.

Insulin resistance is higher in overweight and inactive people. Overcoming insulin resistance requires a COMPLETE OVERHAUL of your situation, changes to your diet, significant weight loss along with regular exercise is required to improve your sensitivity to insulin which will lower your chances of developing type 2 diabetes.

Ways to increase your insulin sensitivity and avoid insulin resistance:
Insulin sensitivity is a term used to describe people who require relatively normal or low levels of insulin to process glucose.
If you have high insulin sensitivity, the body will regulate your blood sugar a lot faster (under an hour) however if you have high resistance to insulin the body will take hours to regulate causing cravings along the way that will further inhibit regulation.
The best ways to help insulin sensitivity and prevent insulin resistance are to avoid:

•    Foods high in sugar
•    Sugar in general
•    Milk
•    Processed foods
•    White rice and pasta
•    Some fruit
•    Fructose syrups

The best ways for regulating your blood sugars levels are to eat foods high in protein like meats, poultry, fish and eggs. Plus good fats that are found in avocado, nuts, flax seeds, coconut oils, Fish oils and cinnamon.
Eating good fats and protein will keep your blood sugar levels balanced, avoiding spikes and troughs.

Summary:
The goal is to keep your blood sugar levels stable and to stay relatively close to your bodies “comfort zone” level. When this occurs the body is able to efficiently burn fat is primary source of energy.
If you can maintain stable blood sugar levels for 90% of the time weight management is a lot easier to achieve. For the other 10% of the time it is good to “shock” your body by going outside the comfort zone and eating a treat that will raise the blood sugar to require insulin to come to the rescue. You can’t eat the same foods over and over, you body will adapt to all the good and bad that they contain, so you need to remind your body from time to time by throwing something new in.

Best Wishes, Happy Reading!

Incorporate Hills In your Running Program To See Instant Results [www.progressionfitness.com.au]

Why does hill running hurt so much? In part, because it takes more work. You have to recruit more muscle fibres to get yourself up the hill, which causes those muscles to fatigue faster. Plus, when you’re running on an incline, there’s a shorter distance for your foot to fall before it hits the ground. That translates into less of an energy boost from the tendons, which you normally get when running on a flat surface.

8 Week Beginners Running Program {www.progressionfitness.com.au}

 

Go from no running at all to 30mins non stop, all in 8 weeks.

The training plan that follows is designed to get you to the point where you can run 30 minutes (about 3-4km’s) at a slow, relaxed pace. It’s a simple, progressive program that begins with more walking than running, and gradually evolves into more running than walking. Each week’s plan also includes  a training tip. Once you are able to run 4km’s nonstop, you can decide on your next goal. You might simply want to continue running 3-4km’s at a time, three or four days per week. Research has shown that this is enough to help you maintain weight, and improve many other important health markers, i.e., your cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin response. Or you might decide that you want to do more, in which case keep updated with harder, more challenging running programs through Twitter or the Progression Fitness fan page. The first 3km’s are the hardest 3km’s you will ever run. Once you have reached this level of fitness, it’s relatively easy to do more. You simply have to budget the time, and be patient and disciplined in your training.

How training above your lactate threshold can teach your body to push harder for longer periods of time. {www.progressionfitness.com.au}

Beyond the Burn

How training above your lactate threshold can teach your body to push harder for longer periods of time.

Runners have long feared lactic acid. We’ve always viewed it as something that tires us out during a race and makes us sore afterward. In high school, I can remember my buddy Jeff propping his legs up after a race and shaking them back and forth, explaining, “I’m draining the lactic acid out of my legs.” In college I would endure long massages, believing that it would flush the evil brew out of my muscles, taking my soreness with it. It was like a bad houseguest that would hang around causing trouble until it was physically removed.

In recent years, studies have shown that we’ve had it all wrong. Most lactic acid is quickly removed after exercise, and it isn’t to blame for postrace soreness. (That’s the result of microtrauma to the muscles.) It isn’t useless either; it contains an important fuel source for high-intensity running. With the right training, we can delay the onset of lactic acid accumulation, and improve our body’s capacity to use it for fuel.

FACT or fiction – Is There a “Fat Burning Zone?” And Where Is Yours? {www.progressionfitness.com.au}

 

Recently someone asked me: What pace should I run for maximum calorie burning? At last, an easy one!

Answer: You burn the most calories/minute when you run your fastest. Calorie burn is directly related to effort. Whether you’re running, biking, swimming or doing pushups, you burn the most calories (for that activity) when you’re doing it as fast as you can. (Of course you probably can’t keep going for more than 10 seconds or so, but that’s another issue.)

The fat-burning question is more complex and confusing. So confusing that wrong answers lurk in many places: at the water cooler, in the locker room, and on endless Internet pages.

Weight loss myths exposed [www.progressionfitness.com.au]

THE MYTH:
EXERCISE IN THE FAT-BURNING ZONE

THE TRUTH:
The “fat-burning zone” lies between 50 and 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. When you exercise at this low intensity, your body draws energy from fat. As your heart rate goes up, more energy comes from carbs. So it seems logical that to lose fat you should keep your heart rate low, says Jason Karp, Ph.D., owner of Runcoachjason.com. But that’s not the case.

“Running at higher intensities causes you to burn a lower percentage of fat calories in favor of carbs,” says Karp, “but you use more total calories.” And that’s the key to slimming down. Plus, since you torch more total calories, the absolute amount of fat burned actually increases, too. So it pays to pick up the pace.

Of course, lower intensity exercise still has its place. Long, slow runs build aerobic fitness and endurance. But to kickstart a pokey metabolism, you need intensity. Karp suggests interval training (condensed runs that mix in intense efforts with recovery) because studies have found these workouts burn more calories during and after exercise (see “Torch Calories” below for Karp’s interval workout). “It also cuts down on boredom,” he says, “which makes it more likely you’ll stick with your program.”

Burn fat – quick [www.progressionfitness.com.au]

Men have been running since we shared disputed turf with saber-toothed cats. So how come so many of us do it wrong? Plenty of reasons: desk jobs, cars, couches, complacency. The urgency is lacking, the muscles are unused. Few of us have ever felt the need for a lesson.

Prepare to learn – and burn. Running incinerates fat like nothing else. And a few tweaks to your technique will have you running faster and longer than any of your distant ancestors. With all the glory available to world-class runners now, it’s no surprise that innovative coaches, sports scientists and runners themselves search for new techniques to gain an edge.

Take Meb Keflezighi, for instance, winner of the 2009 New York City Marathon. He does things – cross-training, plyometrics, cycling – that the great US marathoner of the Seventies, Bill Rodgers, never considered. (And Meb probably wouldn’t consider eating Bill’s favourite food, pizza with mayo.) The same cutting-edge methods that hone the likes of Keflezighi can help you. It’s time to reject conventional wisdom (CW) and hit the roads with newfound wisdom and vigour.

A bigger training week [www.progressionfitness.com.au]

Training Tips

A Bigger Week

Expand your training schedule to 10 or more days to recover better and run stronger.

Long runs, tempo runs, speedwork, hill repeats. You know these are the quality workouts that will propel you to your goals. The trouble is, how do you fit them all in every week, and still have ample time to recover fully after each hard effort? One simple solution: don’t. Instead of trying to stuff your hard days between Monday and Sunday, spread your most important sessions over a 10- to 28-day period, or training cycle. On the other days, run easy, cross-train, or simply take a day off. “You can’t do all the different types of workouts, and hit all the energy systems, in seven days,” says Greg McMillan, an exercise physiologist and coach in Flagstaff, Arizona. “But in a cycle of, say, 14 or 21 days, you can cover more territory and become a more well-rounded runner prepared for a variety of racing distances.”

Perfect timing for your best running [www.progressionfitness.com.au]

Perfect Timing

When to train, eat, stretch, and do everything to run your best.

Runners live by the clock. Whether measuring minutes in a mile or months in a marathon-training season, we’re constantly thinking about where the time goes. We not only have to plan when to run, but also all the other things we might do in our day (or week, or month) that affect performance, like eating, stretching, and getting a massage. And when is key, because there’s an optimal time for everything. “If you ice or eat or strength-train at the wrong moment, you could miss the benefit,” says Donald Buraglio, a physical therapist and ultrarunner in Carmel Valley, California. Indeed, the consequences of poor timing run the gamut from lingering fatigue to an increased risk of the dangerous condition hyponatremia. So that you can get the most from your running life, here is a daily, weekly, and seasonal guide to help you plan when and how to fit it all in. Extra minutes in the day not included.