Fitness News #63 - Winter Hibernation

Bears seem to do the opposite of what comes natural to us, in that they fatten up over summer and slim down over winter.  However that's a natural process for bears, as over winter they don't eat.  For humans unfortunately it doesn't work that way 

Human Habitation

Historically food was scarcer over winter, one of the strategies humans used over winter was to reduce energy output, it comes naturally to us.  Another is to eat eat eat, which was fine when food was scarce, it was all about survival.

Hibernation in the Concrete Jungle

We live in a world of unlimited food supply and a lack of incidental exercise, but our heads still contain the survival rules of our forefathers.  In summer when the alarm goes off, we can look out the window and say "its a beautiful day", where in winter when the alarm goes off, we often look at the alarm and think  "WTF" and that's because we are trying to conserve energy till later in the morning when it warms up even though the modern hunt consists of walking from the bedroom to the kitchen.

So back to our friend the bear, why is mr bear doing nothing and loosing weight?  I'm doing nothing and gaining weight....  Well you know the answer to that one....

What you should do

1. Realise that your body is going into survival mode, preparing you for the scarcities of winter food shortage, which will only happen if you can't remember where the supermarket is.
2. Keep your summer exercise routine continuous thru winter.  Yeh it can be difficult, but in the long term you will be a winner.
3. Don't let the good eating slip off the rails.  It can be tempting to switch to the easy options like takeaway.  Just think how much work will be involved to burn that junk off.

What if you did nothing

Remember how good you feel after a workout, well your going to miss that.  Add to that the reversal of what you have achieved.  Do you really want to do nothing?

See you at the gym

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM
Top Ryde Wed 5.45pm Ride

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

Fitness News #62 - Exercise excuses

As ridiculous as this picture may look, it does depict one person using the situation as an opportunity to exercise while the other person does nothing.

How many times have we heard excuses from those who don't exercise 

Insufficient time to exercise

"I haven't got time to exercise"
This is got to be the most common one used.  In reality busy people seem to be able to find the time.  According to Think TV the average Aussie spends 3hours 10minutes watching TV.  Now if someone said that they exercised for 3hours 10mintues a day, you would think wow, that's a hell of a lot of exercise, but yet that time is available, all they need to do is exercise while watching TV.

Sore Finger 

OK, I'll be serious, if you have an injury, then you should seek expert advice.  I've had my share of injury's and speaking to the experts I've come upon how many don't even do the exercises they are allocated to do, to help them recover from the injury.  So why would they even be looking for an alternative

Can't afford gym membership

There are plenty of exercise options that cost hardly anything and some even save you money, such as walking to the shops, instead of driving.  Odd's on the person with this excuse is bleeding money somewhere.  For example the average aussie spends $1612 a year on booze, so there's your gym membership and some change.

What you should do

1. Continue to do whatever you think is best for you, just because they want to be stupid or use excuses to justify their own inaction, doesn't mean that you have to be stupid, just carry on doing the exercise you love doing, the reward is yours.
2.  If they seek your advice then provide it, but let them own their own initiative
3. When you are injured, do the right thing to assist the recovery and ask the expert what alternate things you can do, during the recover period

What if you did nothing

Ultimately we are all responsible for our own health, its up to them to find their own destiny.  If they haven't invited your advice, then don't bother.

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM
Top Ryde Wed 5.45pm Ride

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

Fitness News #60 - Mothers Day Chocolates

Chocolates are a popular gift on Mothers Day and as we love Mum, chocolates are often on the shopping list.

Of course we are concerned about the health impact to Mum caused by excessive chocolate, by eating a haul of these chocolates before giving Mum a kiss and heading home.

But have you ever wondered why chocolate makes you feel good.  Part of the answer is due to the large quantities of sugar included in the product, see

Fitness News #59 - Why our food is laced with sugar

However to make chocolates you still need to include some chocolate and chocolate contains chemicals

Chemicals in chocolates

1. Theobromine.  Have a similar effect to Caffeine
2. Caffeine.  Do I need to describe this one?  If so what rock have you been hiding under?
3. Phenylethylamine. Makes you feel good

Source:  Chocolate and Your Brain

What you should do

1.  Advise Mum that she should eat a small portion of chocolates at a time, say 2 blocks and that way she can appreciate your gift many times before they are all consumed.
2. Give Mum regular visits to assist her with the chocolate consumption

What if you did nothing

Mum will scoff all the chocolates and you will get none

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM
Top Ryde Wed 5.45pm Ride

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

Fitness News #59 - Why our food is laced with sugar

Came upon an article about how some yoghurt was laced with sugar.  I eat a lot of yoghurt, so I went and checked the sugar contents.  The ones I ate had between 5% and 8% sugar content.  But it didn't take me long to find one that had 30% sugar content. The marketing on the outside gave you the appearance you were eating something really healthy,  after all, it was yoghurt with strawberries.  Looking further it appears that the average Aussie consumes 42kg of sugar per year.  That's 160,860 calories, which could potentiality convert to a hell of a lot of extra midriff.

So why do manufactures put so much sugar in the products that fill our supermarkets?

Well the primary objective of most companies is to drive maximum profit and the food industry is no different

The Sugar situation

Why its there

1. It's incredibly cheap, a quick look on the web shows a price of 50c a kilo [source].  Big companies can drive even lower prices.  Overseas they even go to the extent of using corn sirup to cut the price further.
2. Can I emphasis the price again, adding sugar can lower the overall price, as it can reduce the quantities of more expensive ingredients and/or allow the use of lower quality products as it masks the taste.
3. Sugar is addictive, yes addictive.  Wanna read over the studies on this till your eyes glaze over, then check Wikipedia.  The web is full of articles such as Beat your sugar addiction. And this crucial fact leads to their deal closure;
4. To make you buy their products, they need them to be highly desirable and what not a better way but to reward your sugar addiction.  Don't you feel good after a sugar hit.

What you should do

1.  Figure out how much sugar and of what type you are currently consuming.
2. Determine how much and what type of sugar should be in your diet.  What's the difference between sucrose and fructose?  Good knowledge = good decisions
3. Determine how you can migrate from where you are to where you want to be.  For some this is a simple switch, but for most, we will need to phase out the bad things over a period of time.

What if I did nothing

 The major food manufacturers will love you, your contributing to their profits.  Isn't that what they want you to do.

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM
Top Ryde Wed 5.45pm Ride

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

Fitness News #58 - How to Avoid Junk Food

Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about how much less junk food I eat, compared with about 3 years ago.  While there were many crimes, excessive soft drinks was way up there.  This morning sitting in the cafe, post bike club training ride, a lady I was chatting with go onto the topic of food addiction and non satisfaction.  Fundamentally she was saying that sugar based calories, in particular fructose did not trigger a message in the brain saying that you have eaten enough.  Then she went on to talk about how certain foods and chemicals cause addictiveness.  Well I have to agree, give me high sugar products like soft drinks, I can consume a bottomless amount and the junk was so compelling.

 

How to Avoid eating Junk

Don't buy it.  I'm serious, the bulk of junk eaten you have purchased yourself.  OK, but how do you get there, well I did it thru a process of migration.

Migration #1 - No junk food in the house

Walk away from the computer now and go to your fridge and pantry.  Make a list of what junk food you have.  Now promise to yourself that you will never bring it into the house again.

The majority of the food you eat is eaten at home.  If junk isn't in the fridge, then its not going to say 'eat me' every time you open the fridge.

Migration #2 -Eat the best food first

 You know what you want to eat to be healthy, make the effort to eat that food first.  Odd's on that will satisfy you and then the junk desire will be reduced or eliminated.

Migration #3 - The right selection when out and about

Whether that be in the food hall at the shopping centre or any other food purchasing situation, look at the value of the food by what it represents nutritionally, for example I'll put a preference to a serving that includes a green salad.

Migration #4 - Portion control

This isn't about denial, its where you end up once the addiction has been eliminated.  A recent example for me is how long its taking me to eat my easter eggs, I still have a pretty decent sash.  When I eat them, I only eat a fraction of what I would eaten in the past.

So what is the light at the end of the tunnel

Well where I ended up is that I eat a fraction of the junk I use to eat and the underlining reason for that is that I curtailed that addictive desirability, there is no denial, just a lack of interest.  Also my food costs considerably less

 

New RPM release - RPM55

On Saturday the RPM instructors got to preview the new release, we did a class at Darling Harbour.  See the picture, there were something like 150 bikes in the audience, occupied by instructors.  On stage was 5 instructors delivering the release.

So what's in the new release, you are asking...  OK, I'll spill the beans  :)



1 Listen To The Music (Motiv8 Extended Mix) - The Doobie Brothers
2 We Found Love    - Miss Piper
3 Loco (Empyre One Remix) - Manian
4 Good Feeling    - Flo Rida
5 Run With The Wolves - The Prodigy
6 Drowning (Avicii Remix) - Armin Van Buuren Feat. Laura V
7 Will I Ever (Dragon And Hunter Remix) - Paffendorf Feat. Fara
8 Paradise - Coldplay
9 Not Over You - Gavin DeGraw
Bonus 7 Overload 2011 (Voodoo & Serano Mix) - Voodoo & Serano

 

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM
Top Ryde Wed 5.45pm Ride (new class)

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

Fitness News #57 - How to avoid dying

Easter has come and gone and like as individual as we are, we all did different things, however the 4 days back in the office and the gym is done and dusted, bringing us back to normality.

The majority of people in Australia will die earlier than they need to, but what are they dying of, well here's the deadly serious list. The ABS 2010 stats shows the most common reasons for death are;


Diseases of the circulatory system (I00-I99 31.7%
Neoplasms (C00-D48) 30.2%
Diseases of the respiratory system (J00-J99) 8.3%
External causes of morbidity and mortality (V01-Y98) 6.2%
Mental and behavioural disorders (F00-F99) 4.9%
Diseases of the nervous system (G00-G99) 4.3%
Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (E00-E90) 4.0%
Diseases of the digestive system (K00-K93) 3.6%
Diseases of the genitourinary system (N00-N99) 2.4%
Certain infectious and parasitic diseases (A00-B99) 1.5%
Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (M00-M99) 0.8%
Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (R00-R99) 0.7%
Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period (P00-P96) 0.4%
Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-Q99) 0.4%
Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs and certain disorders involving the immune mechanism (D50-D89) 0.3%
Diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (L00-L99) 0.3%

So looking at the major ones, what can we do to avoid being done in by them

Diseases of the circulatory system

 The #1 killer in Australia, its predominately about heart disease and takes out almost a 1/3 of us.  So how to we avoid this sucker, well according to Mayo there are 5 things you can do;

1. Don't smoke
2. Exercise
3. Eat healthy
4. Maintain healthy weight levels
5. Preventative screenings 

Neoplasms

 What the frig is Neoplasms?  Its a fancy word for cancer and takes out almost a 1/3 of us too.  Yeh, sometimes your number comes up, but the general risk of number can be reduced.  Having a look at the prevention advice, such as Cancer Council Victoria and other places and what do we see;

1. Don't smoke
2. Exercise
3. Eat healthy
4. Maintain healthy weight levels
5. Preventative screenings 

 mmm... a pattern seems to be appearing... seems you don't need to be a rocket scientist to be smart with your bod.  Ask yourself about the final 1/3 of death reasons, how much of that can be prevented by applying the same intelligent decisions to your lifestyle

Classes

Fitness First 

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM
Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

 

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM
Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

 

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

 

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat
 

 

Fitness News #56 - Easter eating

Today while at work, totally focused on work of course, I thought about all the chocolate being sold  and wondered how we got to this situation.  As usual, Google is my friend and it tells me that chocolate eggs started in 1820 as a delicate piece of food art and then moved to the line of manufactured chocolate we have today.  And then I decided that should be the topic for this weeks post. 

 Chocolate Eggs vs Real Eggs

 Now your heard the phrase:   "waiting for the coconut to drop from the tree"  well that's exactly what has happened to me tonight, I've received a post that pretty much sums up what I was going to say, written a little different, but here it is;

Jason Grossman

If you are looking for a few healthy tips checkout what Qualified Nutritionist Sinead Smyth suggests below: 5 Helpful Tips for Not over indulging at Easter
1.Chocolate is on the shelves 365 days of the year, so don’t worry it’s not only available just for the 4 days of Easter. Plan a treat, enjoy it and move on!
2.Add some extra exercise. Most of you have 4 full days off work, use this time to add in some extra exercise that you enjoy, going for a walk with a friend, jog along the beach (No excuses Perthians it’s going to be 30degrees over the weekend!)
3.If you get given lots of chocolate & really don’t want to eat it & throw off your healthy eating, give it away to someone less fortunate. Better yet, set the example and buy something non-chocolate based for Easter to give to your loved ones: )
4. If you’re worried about over eating, just stick to your normal size plate and what you would normally eat at that meal time. Just because it’s there in front of you…doesn’t mean you have to eat it
5.Swap a chocolate egg for a really egg! Check out the comparison in nutrients…it speaks for itself:

Solid Chocolate Egg 100g
Energy 2206 kJ
Total Sugars 54.6 g
Protein 7.6 g
Fat 30.5 g

Hard Boiled Whole egg 100g
Energy 583 kJ
Total Sugars 0.3 g
Protein 12.4 g
Fat 9.5 g

Back in the 50's

Your've heard me say how the population in the 50's were so much thinner than today's population, but yet they had little food compared with all the information of today.  I went and searched for 50's Easter meals and uncovered this one from 1959 A 1950's Easter Brunch

Suggested Menu for an Easter Brunch

• Orange Juice
• Eggs Marguerite
• Baked Ham Slice with Pear Garnish
• Panettone
• Assorted Jams, Marmalades, Preserves
• Coffee

Additional recipe:  Hot Cross Buns

Applying modern standards, you can see the strengths of challenges of what they had, but somehow a day of excess seems to have a lot less than the excesses of today

The Modern Easter

Nowadays we know that eating healthy doesn't mean starving yourself, its about eating smart.  Once again google is my friend and up pops some mouth watering recipes, that if we hadn't been told so would see them almost as wicked    Healthy Easter Recipes and Menus  Awesome !!!!!

Classes

Easter Weekend Classes (Fri - Mon)

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM - not on

Fitness First 

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM - not on

Rockdale HiPf Sun 9.30am Ride - I'm covering the class
Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride - not on
Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM - not on

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM - not on

After Easter Weekend Classes  (Tue - Sat)

Fitness First

Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM

YMCA

Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM - Release 54 original

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM

Sleep Ride Eat Repeat