News

New Equipment

On 27th December 2007 Spirit Health Club received its own christmas present. We received all new cardio vascular equipment for the gym as well as some new dumbells.

This includes four new Treadmills, three new Crosstrainers, two new Bikes, two new Rowers and one new Stepper.

We also received new weights including dumbells ranging from 2kg through to 20kg and two new incline/decline benches.  

So come and join us in the new year to burn off those christmas calories and keep your new years resolution alive.  

Blood Pressure

Blood Pressure – What is it?

Your heart pumps blood around your body

Losing weight is not easy – and can be particularly hard for those who suffer from high blood pressure. But is you have high blood pressure then weight loss really is crucial to your chances of living a long, healthy and happy life.

Why is weight loss important?

Body weight and blood pressure interact in a number of important ways. There is a direct link between how overweight you are and how high your blood pressure will be. Not all overweight people have high blood pressure but a large number of them do – particularly in men. Recent research has shown that no matter what your starting weight, a weight loss of one kg will result in a drop in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure of one mmHg. If you are twenty percent overweight (body weight more than 160 lbs for an average woman or more than 205lbs for an average man) then you are eight times more likely to have high blood pressure than someone of a normal weight.

Being overweight is also linked to high cholesterol levels and to diabetes. These three – diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are often called ‘The Deadly Triad’, having one makes you more at risk of early death, so you can imagine the risk involved in having all three. All three are directly linked with being overweight and all three can be avoided or improved by weight loss.

 

September 2008 Newsletter

 

 

Tips for burning fat

Fat Burning Tips

1.       Interval training.  This can mean running (speeding the heart rate up) and then jogging or walking (slowing the heart rate down) then running, walking, etc.  You can also try this using the rower, ie. 4 x 250m.  This shift pattern causes the heart to work harder and helps to burn more calories.  Your body can also continue to burn more calories for up to 19 hours after training!!

2.       Use weights.  Weight training will enhance your body’s ability to burn calories.  2 sets of 12-15 of the major muscle groups will suffice.  Also try to alternate upper body and lower body to make the heart work harder.

3.       Burn calories throughout the day in many different ways such as walking to the local shop instead of driving, getting off the bus a stop earlier, run up the stairs, etc.

4.       Move more.  Make it a daily challenge to find ways to move your body.  Climb stairs if given a choice between that and escalators or lifts.  Walk your dog; chase your kids; toss balls with friends; mow the lawn; banish all remote controls.  Anything that moves your limbs is not only a fitness tool, it’s a stress buster.  Think ‘move’ in small increments of time.  It doesn’t have to be an hour in the gym or a 45-minute aerobic dance class or tai chi or kickboxing.  But that’s great when you’re up to it.  Meanwhile, move more.

5.       Cut fat.  Avoid the obvious such as fried foods, burgers and other fatty meats (ie. pork, bacon, ham, salami, ribs and sausage).  Dairy products such as cheese, cottage cheese, milk and cream should be eaten in low fat versions.  Nuts and sandwich meats, mayonnaise, margarine, butter and sauces should be eaten in limited amounts.  Most are available in lower fat versions such as substitute butter, fat reduced cheeses and mayonnaise.  Grate cheese instead of slicing it as it will save a third in fat.

6.       Reduce stress.  Easier said than done, stress busters come in many forms.  Some techniques recommended by experts are to think positive thoughts.  Spend 30 minutes a day doing something you like – soak in a bath; walk on the beach or in a park; read a good book; visit a friend; play with your dog; listen to soothing music; watch a funny movie.  Get a massage, a facial or a haircut.  Meditate.  Count to ten before losing your temper or getting aggravated.  Avoid difficult people when possible.  When faced with a stressful situation, our brains signal an immediate response causing the adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol.  High levels of cortisol result in increased appetite and fat deposits.

7.       Crunch in bed.  Before you even get out of bed in the morning, do ten stomach crunches while lying flat on your mattress.  Increase daily by one until you get up to100.  Think you’ll never get there?  Try it.  You may eventually have to set your clock to wake up fifteen minutes earlier, a small price to pay for a flatter stomach.

8.       Try to eat five or six small meals/healthy snacks each day, and every three to four hours.  This will keep your metabolism ticking over, and therefore keep your body burning calories.

9.       Eat breakfast within one hour of waking up as this will kick-start your metabolism.  Also, try not to eat anything after 8pm each night when your body is winding down.

10.    Aim to do between 20-40 minutes of cardio per gym session, not necessarily in one go.  And make certain that you keep pushing yourself for at least 10 minutes of that.

11.    Take a brisk walk up a steep incline for 20 minutes at least, in one of your gym sessions each week.

12.    Try not to eat carbohydrates after 5pm, as you are less likely to burn them off later in the day and, therefore, they will be stored as fat.  Try to eat lean meat, fish, fruit (not bananas), vegetables, pulses and dairy products (preferably low fat).  Such a carb curfew helps to control insulin levels – important for weight loss.

13.    Have regular assessments and measurements to help keep you motivated.

14.    Monitor your steps by using a pedometer and aim for 12,500 a day.

15.    Eat lots of fruit and veg, fill up on fibre, avoid saturated fats, choose lean proteins and drink lots of water – basic diet tips!

16.    When shopping, check the labels of products.  Just because it says ‘low fat’ doesn’t necessarily mean it is.  Avoid trans fats by looking for the term ‘hydrogenated’.  The higher up the list you see this term, the more unhealthy fats there are in the food.

17.    Don’t drink alcohol on an empty stomach, and only drink it in moderation.  This will slow down the rate at which your body can metabolise alcohol and you will feel drunk very quickly.

18.    Research from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, USA, revealed regularly chewing sugar free gum increases your metabolic rate by about 20%.

19.    Add fish oil to any meal.  In one study, 3g a day boosted metabolism by up to 400 calories!  That’s enough to lose nearly one pound a week.

20.    Drink plenty of water, and drink it very cold – your body burns almost 50 calories heating it to body temperature!

21.    It’s a classic – never go food shopping on an empty stomach!

22.    Supplements are often good sources for fat burning.  Alpha Lipoic Acid is an essential fatty acid that is hard to come by in everyday foods as it is destroyed very easily through cooking/processing, and can be very good for reducing body fat.  Increasing your protein intake could also help as we have no capacity to store excess protein so the brain readily detects when you have eaten enough and switches off hunger signals.  Vitamin and mineral supplements are good if you don’t get enough in your diet.  Remember that supplements are just that – supplements.  They should not be used to make up for a poor diet.

23.    Choose unrefined carbohydrates such as brown wheat, brown bread and brown rice as opposed to other options.  Such unrefined carbohydrates retain all their vitamins and minerals whereas their counterparts lose the goodness from being ‘tampered’ with.

24.    Slow down!  You’ll eat 15% fewer calories if you sit down and slow down your meal rather than eating on a hoof.  Scoffing your meal means that your hypothalamus (the part of the brain which senses when you’re full) doesn’t receive the right signals and explains why you feel hungrier sooner.  Also, chewing your food allows the saliva to provide a more efficient and effective breakdown of food.

Healthy Eating

10 Golden Rules of Healthy Eating

Good nutrition isn’t brain surgery. Just follow these simple rules to feel good and lose fat all the time.

1 Ditch the junk

Have you noticed all the adverts on the TV for fresh broccoli?  No?  That’s because there aren’t any.  Bloated corporations have no interest in selling you fresh food, only heavily branded, pre-packaged slop created using the cheapest ingredients and made to taste palatable by stuffing them with fat, salt and sugar.  Most junk food is heavy in calories and light on nutrition.

By junk we’re talking burgers, crisps, ready meals, anything in ‘a delicious crispy coating’, anything formed into unnatural shapes (stand up chicken nuggets), anything containing hydrogenated vegetable oils, and anything wrapped in pastry where you can’t identify the grisly substance inside.  Buy fresh and learn to cook.

2 Balance calories in with calories out

It’s simple really.  To stay the same weight you need to burn off the same number of calories through activity as you take in through food.  If you eat more than you burn, that excess energy is stored as fat for use later on.  Before you know it, you’re wearing vertical stripes in a vain attempt to look slimmer.

Here’s what to do:

Firstly you need to work out your ‘resting metabolic rate’ (RMR) so to do this, follow the table below.

Age	Male	Female
10-18 years 19-30 years 31 years +	(body weight in kg x 17.5) + 651 (body weight in kg x 15.3) + 679 (body weight in kg x 11.6) + 879	(body weight in kg x 12.2) + 746 (body weight in kg x 14.7) + 496 (body weight in kg x 8.7) + 829

Next multiply your RMR by:     

1.2                    if mostly sedentary (light or no exercise)

1.375                if lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week)

1,55                  if moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week)

1.725                if very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/week)

1.9                    if extra active (hard daily exercise/sports and physical job)

This will give you your ‘daily energy expenditure’.

Then you need to estimate the number of ‘calories expended during exercise’ and break it down to a daily average.  So for this, roughly guess the amount of calories you burn whilst working out and multiply it by the amount of days you work out to give a weekly figure.  Than divide this by 7 to give you your estimated daily calories expended.

Add your ‘daily energy expenditure’ and your ‘calories expended during exercise’ to give you your ‘maintenance calorie intake’.  Your maintenance calorie intake is the number of calories you need to maintain your body weight. 

The final step is to reduce this number by 15% by multiplying your maintenance calorie intake by 0.85.  This gives you the appropriate calorie intake for a weight-loss programme.

3 Make fat only 25% of your diet

As we’ve just read, it’s calories that count when it comes to controlling your body fat.  However, dietary fat contains nine calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and protein, which both contain just four calories per gram.  Basically, fatty foods are more than twice as calorific as other foods for the same sized meals, so it makes sense to limit your fat intake. 

What’s more, the wrong kinds of fats can clog up arteries, making heart attacks more likely in later life.  Try to steer clear of trans fats (it’s those hydrogenated vegetable oils again) and keep saturated fats, found mainly in red meats and dairy foods, to a minimum.  Instead, go for ‘healthy’ fats, such as the kind found in fish, nuts and olive oil.  These are actually good for your heart if taken regularly in small doses.

4 Drink lots of water

There are hundreds of good reasons for drinking water – you’d be dead without it being number one on the list – but it is also vital for maintaining a healthy weight.  If you don’t drink enough water your kidneys don’t function properly, and they pass some of their waste-filtration responsibilities on to the liver, which is then required to give up some of its fat-metabolising duties.  The result is that you hang on to more stored fat than you would if you glugged down water on a regular basis.  Drink water, lose fat – it really is that simple.

5 Eat five or six small meals a day

Most of us have been brought up on the concept of three square meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.  However, this throws your metabolism into disarray because you stuff yourself with food, creating an energy overload, followed by starving yourself until the next meal.  Your insulin levels bounce up and down as your body tries to stabilise your blood sugar, and the result is that you store more fat than you actually need to.

A better method is to eat small meals throughout the day.  That way you get a constant drip-feed of energy, your blood sugar levels remain stable, and you never get hungry, so avoiding that mid-afternoon raid on the biscuit tin.

6 Downsize your meals as the day goes on

Does this diet sound familiar?  Coffee for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, huge plate of meat and potatoes plus cake and ice-cream for dinner.  It’s the Great British way of eating, and it could explain why we’re fast becoming a nation of bloaters.

In the morning you need energy to get you through the day, so then is the time to stock up on carb-heavy meals – cereals, toast, fruit.  As the day goes on try to eat less with each meal so that your last meal is a small one, mainly protein-based.  There’s no point having a large bowl of pasta before bed, because all that energy won’t get used up and will find a resting place in your sagging belly.

7 Eat 30g of fibre every day

Amazing stuff, fibre, and not just because it makes your bowels as regular as a Swiss watch.  Fibre helps to lower insulin levels in your body, which decreases fat absorption.  It also absorbs water and swells up in your stomach, making you feel fuller and less tempted by the sticky toffee pudding for afters.  Good sources of fibre are oat-based cereals, beans and pulses.

8 Veg out

Vegetables are the one food you can eat as much as you like all the time (within reason – eating a dozen cucumbers a day may have a strange effect on your digestive tract).  They provide stacks of vitamins with minimum calories.  Vegetables make great snack foods eaten raw – carrots, celery, etc – and can provide the mainstay of bigger meals when steamed, grilled or fried.  To get the most out of veg, cook them quickly and eat them crunchy before they lose their nutrients.  Five portions a day is a minimum – nine would be better.

9 Take supplements sparingly

If your diet is good enough, you shouldn’t need to pop pills to stay healthy, and you certainly shouldn’t use multivitamin tablets to make up for a poor diet.  Your body needs a huge array of nutrients, which you can only get from having a varied diet.  That said, if you work out often, you might want to take extra vitamin C and E to replace lost stores during training.  Vegetarians can miss out on vitamin B12 unless they use supplements.

10 Enjoy treats in moderation

If you like ice-cream, have a bowl now and then.  Just don’t demolish a two-litre tub of double choc-chip every night.  If you always deny yourself the stuff you like, you’re unlikely to be able to keep up a healthy eating plan, and you’re more likely to fall off the wagon and have a lard blowout.  The trick is to have occasional treats to keep you happy, while eating healthily the rest of the time.  That way you’ll find it easier to make good nutrition part of your life, rather than something you do grudgingly for a short period.

 

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