How alcohol affects health and fitness

In this science episode, we discuss alcohol. It’s a topic that comes quite often when I deal with my clients. They ask whether they can consume alcohol in their health and fitness journey. The answer, that isn't really an answer for this question is “it depends.”

A March 2013 study found that the chronic alcohol consumption reduces testosterone and increases cholesterol, both of which are not good for muscle growth and muscle retention. Therefore, chronic use of alcohol is not recommended. Moderate alcohol consumption may be okay. But you need to understand what is moderate. Just to give you a number, something less than 7 drinks a week should be okay.

There are other studies that may help you set your strategy. A March 2015 study on “Alcohol, Obesity and Loss of Strength” found alcohol use reduces our strength. Another 2015 study on “the lifestyle factors in associated with successful weight-loss” found that losing weight is co-related with a healthier lifestyle which includes drinking less alcohol.

After seeing results like this, it may seem like it is best to quit drinking entirely. But that may not be practical. So, the goal should be to build healthy habits that we can keep over time. Gradual changes of habits are more sustainable, which will lead to a healthier lifestyle.

So, an individual needs to determine what is going to work for him or her. One perfect way to deal with alcohol is treating it like sugar. Sugar is one of the things that create fat in our body. Alcohol works almost exactly the same way.

Links for further reading:

Nutrition and Metabolism Article

Springer Article 

T and F Online

Now you are better informed of how you should deal with alcohol in your health and fitness journey.

The fountain of life – water

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The magic of sleep

Everybody loves good sleep, but they often don’t get proper sleep. Babies and teens sleep well but when we get to adulthood, we begin to purposely avoid it. We may want to sleep at night but we don’t sleep very well. We don’t do the right things when it comes to sleeping.

Sleep the actual magic happens. That’s the time our body goes through the process of repairing. Sleeping is the time when our body repairs itself. Sleep is also when your brain stores memory. In fact, while we're asleep, the brain repairs itself. So, if you are not getting proper sleep, you're short changing your brain and body. We have stress hormones that develop during the day when we work but when we sleep, they get washed away. So, if we are not getting proper sleep, then we are not fixing our stress problems.

Most of our hormones are set on a circadian rhythm and sleep is a big part of driving release and removal of them.  Breaking your sleep cycle will affect your hormone cycles, which is quite damaging to your body and brain.t’s not about how much sleep you get because the ideal number of necessary sleep varies from person to person. So, quality of sleep is

The amount of sleep someone needs varies from person to person. The quality of sleep is more significant than quantity. The environment needs to be the ideal one when we sleep. Avoid non-natural lights in your room when you sleep. Trying to avoid blue light is a good idea. And your room needs to be noise-free as well so that you don’t get up until your sleep is naturally completed. Taking alcohol or any kind of medication is a big “No” before sleeping. They can hamper your normal sleep cycle.

The environment needs to be the ideal when we sleep. Here are a few tips for better sleep:

Artificial lights

Avoid artificial lights in your at night and in your room when you sleep. Artificial lights are typically in the blue spectrum, which breaks the circadian rhythm, telling the brain it is daytime.

Noise-neutral

Your room needs to be noise-neutral.  Allan uses a fan to make his bedroom noise-neutral, but you may prefer full quiet.

Alcohol/sleeping meds

You may be unconscious with alcohol or sleeping pills, but unfortunately you're not going through the full sleep cycles.  As a result, you're not getting good rest and your hormone cycles will be disrupted.

Sleep smarter | Shawn Stevenson

How is sleep affecting my weight loss?

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Obesity and exercise

In this science episode, we explore studies on exercise and obesity. Does exercise help reduce obesity? Some interesting studies seek to answer that question.

A 2003 article of Journal of the American Medical Association by Drs. Frank Hu and colleagues examined the relationship between women’s BMI and their physical activity. An important term here is “Body-Mass Index”, briefly BMI which measures the relationship between a person’s weight and height. The ideal BMI for a person is between 18 and 25. So, anyone with over 25 BMI is considered overweight and below 18 considered underweight. The study took 6 years to examine 50277 women aged between 46 and 71. What the study found was really very interesting. Individuals two were sitting two additional hours a day had 23% more obesity. So, less daily movement is one of the major reasons for increase in obesity. So, someone who watches TV for two hours is more prone to obesity than another person who chooses to walk around and constantly on the move. The study report says two hours of daily walking or around the house saw obesity decrease by 9 percent and one hour of brisk walking saw 24 percent obesity decrease.

Another study also in 2003 published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Drs. Koh-Banerjee and colleagues examined 16,587 men aged 40 to 75 years who they described as healthy. The study took nice long years to complete and it was about weight and waist size. The study found that just 4 hours of weekly increase of physical activity resulted in a reduction of their waist circumference by about 1.9 millimeters. On the other hand, the men who increase their TV watching by 20 hours a week had waist size increase of about 3.0 millimeters. One of the key finding of the study was the group that exercised daily had way to less obesity than the group that did not.There are many more studies that indicate the level of activity is an important factor that determine your fitness and obesity. Consider how your activity level can be affecting your weight loss or weight gain. Obesity is at an epidemic level and it is time to change that. The change starts with you.

There are many more studies that indicate the level of activity is an important factor that determine your fitness and obesity. Consider how your activity level can be affecting your weight loss or weight gain. Obesity is at an epidemic level and it is time to change that. The change starts with you.

Weight training for fat loss

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Habits and failure

A commitment to creating a fitness lifestyle is all about establishing habits and lessening the chances of failure. To be successful, a person’s “why” has to be at least partially for him or herself. This is critical to establishing a new self-relationship.

Consider Sandy, who has been featured on previous episodes. Sandy was establishing healthy habits and taking action. She was eating better, staying active, and drinking more water. All of this was allowing her to play with her grandchildren just the way she had imagined when she set out on her fitness journey.

In this call with Sandy, she considered next steps in her journey. She needed to develop her goals for the short-run. What did she want to accomplish in the next six months? These goals were to be measurable and attainable, and she seemed ready to get started.

She also recognized that she needed to drink more water. Sandy had a history of joint issues. Though her increased water intake was helping, but even more would be needed to get her to full hydration. This would allow her to avoid additional pain and problems in her knees. These added fluids would also help to flush toxins out of her system both quickly and efficiently.

Overall, Sandy was making progress. She was losing weight and getting stronger. She had increased endurance and was even getting compliments on her physical changes. However, unexpectedly and unexplainably, she dropped out of the program at Week 7.

Emotional roadblocks can be a tough obstacle to overcome. They have the power to derail previously established habits and threaten failure. This is so very important and will be discussed on the next episode.

Working with a personal trainer

Emotional roadblocks in health and fitness | Ellen Shuman

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3 keys to successful weight loss

In this episode, we cover the three keys to successful weight loss – patience, persistence, and progression.

Patience

You need to understand that nothing significant can be achieved overnight. So, you shouldn’t expect to lose 20/30/40 pounds in a week or a month. You'll have to have patience.
When you want to lose weight, you need to be practical and set an achievable goal, for example, 1 – 2 pounds in the first week. It’s also important for you to set small, specific milestones like 5 – 10 pounds in next month Most people find they lose weight rather quickly at first and then level out.  This is the body's normal state.  Persistence will keep you on track.  Just keep working and it will happen.

Persistence

The whole weight-loss thing is something that happens gradually. You can’t expect to achieve your milestone when you don’t do anything about it.  As we learned in episode 9, you can use weight training as a part of your weight loss program.  Starting small and progressing by slowly adding resistance will

Progression

At any stage of the process, you can’t afford to quit. It’s never going to be easy to get what you want. So, you need to be very persistent. Just after you make the commitment, you need to stick to your commitment and keep doing all that makes your goal achievement easier and a step forward.

Use these three keys, stick to your commitment, keep moving forward, and focus on the end goal. You can do this.

Todd loses over 300lbs

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Weight training for fat loss

When we decide it’s time to lose weight, we usually think it needs to involve lots of time on the treadmill, or long hours running or some other type of cardiovascular workout. This tends to be the go to option for many of us as we often shy away from weight training.   We tend to think of weight training as something that will make us big and bulky where aerobic training burns fat and helps you lose weight. However, weight training for fat loss can be a powerful tool in your weight loss toolbox.

There are changes we undergo throughout our lifecycle that often lead to weight gain.   Injury, illness, aging, lack of energy, changes in hormones all contribute to the adding of pounds and inches that often go unnoticed for years. The body also undergoes a process called sarcopenia, which is the natural loss of musical mass associated with age.   When we are in this process we burn fewer calories and store more fat.

But our muscles play many important roles, one being that they give the body shape. Fat tissue, on the other hand, is a sort of formless mass.   When we lose muscle, we lose shape and form, but we also lose the metabolism boosting functionality of that muscle.

So how can we apply weight training to our goals of becoming healthier and more fit? Incorporate weight training for fat loss as part of a balanced fitness program. Working your muscles creates active muscle fibers that burn up huge amounts of calories, even when you are sleeping.   And while weight training for fat loss can be a powerful way to lose weight and prevent weight gain in the future, be sure to balance it with aerobic training to improve overall strength and efficiency of your cardiovascular system as well.

Obesity and exercise

Weight machines versus free weights

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For health and fitness, sugar is the devil

So you have made the commitment to your health and fitness. Now what? We’ll need to take a look at sugar, as it can be the single most damaging thing for your health and fitness. Is sugar really that bad? The short answer yes, though we do need some level of glucose in our body to function properly. Unfortunately, though, we get far too much sugar in our daily diets. In short, sugar is the devil.

Excess sugar intake can manifest itself in various ways, such as the onset of diabetes, tooth decay, and an increase of inflammation within our bodies. In addition, and according to a study, consuming 17-21% of our calories from added sugar increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease:
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nutrition/Added-Sugars-Add-to-Your-Risk-of-Dying-from-Heart-Disease_UCM_460319_Article.jsp#.V7I3pfkrJdi

Keep in mind, when we talk about “added sugars” we are referring to those sugars that are added to foods and beverages during processing and preparation. It is important to read food labels, as sugar can be disguised as:

• agave syrup
• beet sugar
• cane juice
• cane syrup
• high fructose
• corn syrup
• honey
• lactose
• malt
• dextrose
• galactose
• glucos2
• sucrose
• rice syrup
• fructose
• and others..

Keeping a food log will help you track the amount of sugar consumed. Eating whole foods will provide some level of sugar, but will also provide fiber and nutrients. And while sugar is the devil, monitoring and even lowering your sugar intake will help you to look and feel a lot better.

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