Get the habits right

This is an interesting report of a study looking at how teaching people to eat at maintenance - neither gaining nor losing - can have big benefits for long term weight control.

Mastering weight-maintenance skills before embarking on diet helps women avoid backsliding

women who spent eight weeks mastering weight-maintenance skills before embarking on a weight-loss program shed the same number of pounds as women who started a weight-loss program immediately. More importantly, the study showed that the "maintenance-first" women had regained only 3 pounds on average a year later, compared to the average 7-pound gain for the immediate dieters.

Very interesting.  A lot of this chimes with Lyle McDonald's ideas.

So much of weight control is psychological, learning habits....

Shoulder and Hip Mobility Exercises by Skyler Tanner

This is worth watching....

Skyler Tanner, of Efficient Exercise, discusses shoulder and hip mobility exercises. These exercises can be useful to anyone but especially those in sedentary desk jobs.

scary epigenetics....you suffer because your grandad smoked?

I posted somethings earlier this year after seeing a talk by Nesa Carey.  

Here is a story I spotted the other day, which talks about some of the implications of this areas of discovery.  

new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine demonstrates that nicotine exposure also causes asthma in the smoker's grandchildren

The report points to an open access study:

Perinatal nicotine exposure induces asthma in second generation offspring

ConclusionsGermline epigenetic marks imposed by exposure to nicotine during pregnancy can become permanently programmed and transferred through the germline to subsequent generations, a ground-breaking finding that shifts the current asthma paradigm, opening up many new avenues to explore.

For those who are parents, or wil be,  this gives an awesome responsibility - your actions will be having  an impact on your children and grandchildren that you cannot even understand.  That is positive and negative.

The purpose

In keeping with the last post on simplicity, I thought I'd post this.  Remember that Einstein adage that we need to keep things as simple as possible but no simpler.

I went back to John Little's article - Done in One   and I wanted to pull out some of the key principles that he stated there that might keep us on track:

What is the purpose of exercise?

• the purpose of exercise is to recruit and stimulate as many muscle fibers (in all categories – slow twitch, intermediate twitch and fast twitch) as possible

• for this to occur, a muscle or group of muscles must be given a load sufficient (but not excessive) enough to initiate a sequential recruitment of fibres, and

• given a time frame that permits such fibres to be recruited.

All that is illustrated in the parable that I wrote on the Size Principle.

Why are we doing this?  To get certain benefits

• to stimulate your body to grow stronger;  getting stronger makes everything easier;

• to employ fibres that otherwise might be left to decondition and atrophy and, thus, give your body a strong impetus to retain (or, in the case of sarcopenia, reclaim) these fibres and the multiple metabolic pathways contained therein. This is why we want to sequentially recruit all possible fibres.

• to empty the glycogen stores within muscle fibres, which can serve to stave off potentially health-threatening conditions such as Type II Diabetes, high blood pressure, arterial plaque and heart disease.

However there can be negatives from exercise

• injury - acute injury from a movement.  A strain, rupture, tear, fracture.....

• wear and tear - chronic problems that accrue from ongoing movement

So we want the benefits while minimising the risks.


How do we do this?  What you do and how you do it

• What you do? - pick safe movements that take account of proper biomechanics, joint function etc.  Read Bill DeSimone's work, or watch this:

• How do you do it? .....how indeed.  How you perform each movement is important.  Quoting John Little again:

Fibers can be recruited with motionless exercise (in which time and load are the only factors)  [think TSC which is the latest fad], and they can be recruited with repetitions (in which case load, distance and varying leverage factors combine to accelerate the fatigue and recruitment process (i.e., in positions of poor leverage and higher levels of moment arm, the fatigue rate is accelerated, while in positions of good leverage and lower levels of moment arm, the fatigue rate is slowed). 

Some 60 Second Krav Maga

From Marcus at Krav Maga Edinburgh

Simplicity

You might have noticed that my frequency of posting has diminished a bit recently.  There are various reasons -  busy work, other commitments - but one thing is a degree of realisation of how much we try to complicate things.  So much of exercise / health / fitness at root is pretty simple and straight forward. However we often seek novelty, look for the new secret exercise, protocol or diet that will transform us.  Basic persistence and patience on the fundamentals gets too boring.

There is a great value in Occam's Razor:

Plurality must never be posited without necessity  

or 

"Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler." (allegedly Einstein)

This happens so much with exercise.  Making it complicated, using esoteric language, creating the secret gnostic priesthood who really understand and have the knowledge.  

Lets keep it simple.

Lift weights to prevent metabolic syndrome

Of course.  Build some muscle so that they sugar you are eating has somewhere safe to be stored....

"Exercise professionals should strongly encourage the activity of lifting weights among adults of all ages to promote metabolic health," Drs Magyari and Churilla conclude. These efforts should focus on groups with lower rates of weight lifting: women, older adults, Mexican Americans, and lower-income people. 

Lifting Weights Protects Against Metabolic Syndrome, Study Suggests

Seven Tips On How To Lose Stomach Fat At Home

Lose Stomach Fat

There are so many different diets that for people who are serious about weight loss, it can be quite confusing. Frustrated? Now you can relax, because here. Few basic rules you can follow that the question of how one can be solved lose belly fat fast at home The good news is that you can easily integrate it into your daily routine for the rest of your life.

1. Get enough sleep. According to studies, can significantly boost your metabolism by at least 8 hours of sleep are often those who sleep less until the end of overeating to them. The energy they had gained through more sleep Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night for a month and see what a difference it makes to your health!



2. Guests can work out in the evenings. Research shows that our metabolism to slow down during the late afternoon or at the end of the day tends. So, so you burn more calories, go to set aside some time in the evenings for a walk, a bike ride or go to the gym. It will be easier to keep this motivation high when you find a workout buddy!

3. Increase your overall movement. Of course you will lose more calories when you, as you move still. Try to walk to a nearby place instead of driving. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Do some gardening instead watch more TV. By gradual changes, you will notice that what your life is always active, you will be one of the secrets of how you learned to lose stomach fat fast at home.

4. Add more protein to your diet. Proteins, which stabilizes the insulin production in your body. Too much insulin (caused by sugary foods) leads to more fat storage in all your mid section.

5. Remember to skip meals. This is definitely something you want to stay away from. You need your body is not good, by putting in "starvation mode". Everything you do, is that all you are doing is telling your body that it store extra fat, if it does not get new needs nutrients, and they slow down your metabolism to adjust food intake. And really, skipping meals you will never have a flat, toned stomach. It is absolutely not how to lose stomach fat fast at home.

6. Make sure your water intake is still high. Staying well hydrated will help your joints move well and will also help flush away excess fats in your body and blood.

7. Build muscle mass. How to lose stomach fat fast at home, is working on it increasing muscle mass, either. By raising your children aware Bend your muscles how to be a vacuum, putting food away Lean muscle accelerates both the metabolism and burn fat.

By these seven proposals in place, you are. Well on your way to solving this challenge, how to lose belly fat fast at home Best of luck!

Discover how you can cure belly fat may be a long process but it can also be very easily and quickly if you eat right and move right. You can learn how to do so on your own, or if you prefer a structured weight loss plan, check out an unbiased review (pros and cons) of the popular Fat Loss for Idiots plan. We wish you success in your weight loss journey!

Why we blush

apparantly it is something to do with farting

Drugs in Sport

Amid all of the current drama about Lance Armstrong, I just wanted to point to this post from the Sock Doc about Drugs in Sport....It is an interesting perspective.

The question you should ask yourself is just how natural you want to be. How clean do you want to be? And in turn – how healthy do you want to be? By no means am I saying that moderate caffeine, alcohol, or even sugar use is a problem (for most). But if you’re on a drug, for a medical condition or not, realize that you’re almost always altering some physiological function in your body that you shouldn’t be messing around with. If you’re better with it – what’s wrong so you can’t do without it? Why can’t you wake up, sleep, think, or perform in everyway without it?

I must admit to some confusion about the whole area of drugs in sport.  Sometimes I think that we should just hold up our hands and let the athletes do whatever they want.  The one that always gets me is altitude training.   Why is altitude training allowed yet blood doping / EPO isn't ?  It has the same effect.

None of this is about health; sport - especially at the top levels - is not about health.

The Science of Usain Bolt

Carbs make you lose your mind?

Of course if this report was saying the opposite the paleo world would be criticising it because it relies on food survey questionnaires  which are notoriously dodgy.  Be that as it may, this indicates that diets higher in protein and fat fare better in preventing cognitive decline....Who knows, it is all correlation and questionnaires, but is very interesting:

Researchers tracked 1,230 people ages 70 to 89 who provided information on what they ate during the previous year. At that time, their cognitive function was evaluated by an expert panel of physicians, nurses and neuropsychologists. Of those participants, only the roughly 940 who showed no signs of cognitive impairment were asked to return for follow-up evaluations of their cognitive function. About four years into the study, 200 of those 940 were beginning to show mild cognitive impairment, problems with memory, language, thinking and judgment that are greater than normal age-related changes.
Those who reported the highest carbohydrate intake at the beginning of the study were 1.9 times likelier to develop mild cognitive impairment than those with the lowest intake of carbohydrates. Participants with the highest sugar intake were 1.5 times likelier to experience mild cognitive impairment than those with the lowest levels. 

But those whose diets were highest in fat — compared to the lowest — were 42 percent less likely to face cognitive impairment, and those who had the highest intake of protein had a reduced risk of 21 percent. 

When total fat and protein intake were taken into account, people with the highest carbohydrate intake were 3.6 times likelier to develop mild cognitive impairment.

The study is discussed here:

Eating Lots of Carbs, Sugar May Raise Risk of Cognitive Impairment, Mayo Clinic Study Finds

Protein, little and often?

The debate on this one seems to go on and on.

Here is a new study which recommends moderate protein every 3 hours rather than something less frequent.

We conclude that the pattern of ingested protein, and not only the total daily amount, can impact whole-body protein metabolism. Individuals aiming to maximize NB would likely benefit from repeated ingestion of moderate amounts of protein (~20g) at regular intervals (~3h) throughout the day.

Daytime pattern of post-exercise protein intake affects whole-body protein turnover in resistance-trained males

The whole paper is available to read, so it will be interesting to go through it and see what they are really saying.

Another Sunday morning

I am finding it harder sometimes to keep finding things to post here.

I am no scientist or expert and I hope you realise this.  If you want a good analysis of the science and the new studies, check out Suppversity or Chris Beardsley's site.

There is so much information out there now on blogs and we are all so often searching for the new and the novelty.  The basics are what really matter and they are not actually that complicated.  I've been guilty of this myself, always looking for the secret knowledge.  I've come full circle in many ways with respect to diet for example.  The whole paleo thing has gone mental and I have found success basically in an old fashioned sensible diet - as Lyle McDonald recommends.  There is some tracking of calories and macros but with simple rules it is not too hard.

Not sure what I am getting at here!

Oh well, I am still getting into the hills on a nice autumn day....which is what matters.

Sleep....makes you an optimistic problem solver

Sleep is magic and good sleep is even better:

It helps you solve tough problems

It makes you optimistic  (or perhaps the optimistic are able to sleep?)

Fasted Training? Exercise with low glycogen to be a better fuel burner

This is a very interesting one!  Exercise in a depleted state seems to look like it could lead to more mitochondria in the muscle and therefore more capacity to burn fuel and create energy and movement.....  So one up for fasted training?

Exercise with low glycogen increases PGC-1α gene expression in human skeletal muscle.

Recent studies suggest that carbohydrate restriction can improve the training-induced adaptation of muscle oxidative capacity. However, the importance of low muscle glycogen on the molecular signaling of mitochondrial biogenesis remains unclear. Here, we compare the effects of exercise with low (LG) and normal (NG) glycogen on different molecular factors involved in the regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis. Ten highly trained cyclists (VO(2max) 65 ± 1 ml/kg/min, W (max) 387 ± 8 W) exercised for 60 min at approximately 64 % VO(2max) with either low [166 ± 21 mmol/kg dry weight (dw)] or normal (478 ± 33 mmol/kg dw) muscle glycogen levels achieved by prior exercise/diet intervention. Muscle biopsies were taken before, and 3 h after, exercise. The mRNA of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator-1 was enhanced to a greater extent when exercise was performed with low compared with normal glycogen levels (8.1-fold vs. 2.5-fold increase). Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase isozyme 4 mRNA were increased after LG (1.3- and 114-fold increase, respectively), but not after NG. Phosphorylation of AMP-activated protein kinase, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases and acetyl-CoA carboxylase was not changed 3 h post-exercise. Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production and glutathione oxidative status tended to be reduced 3 h post-exercise. We conclude that exercise with low glycogen levels amplifies the expression of the major genetic marker for mitochondrial biogenesis in highly trained cyclists. The results suggest that low glycogen exercise may be beneficial for improving muscle oxidative capacity.

We have all had DOMS...

An interesting study here....while DOMS might be due to damage to a particular muscle, in the brain it looks like the pain is mapped all over the body....

Central Projection of Pain Arising from Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) in Human Subjects

Using event-related fMRI, the temporal evolution of brain activity during the subacute pain state DOMS was mapped in the human brain. We located strongest and widespread pain-related activations in the primary motor and sensory cortex that affected the area somatotopically related to the thigh and also adjacent areas reminiscent of the transient cortical remodelling described in chronic pain states, such as CRPS or phantom limb pain. Further pain-related activation was located in the SMA, IPL, STG, bilaterally in the insula and the cingulate cortex. Activation in the cerebellum was most widespread when pain from DOMS occurred in combination with limb movement. Our study demonstrated that defined stimulation or repeated contraction of a DOMS-affected painful muscle can evoke strong and reproducible increases in BOLD signal; therefore pain from DOMS provides an effective, non-invasive model to study the central processing of inflammatory muscle pain

Very interesting stuff.  I wonder what signals the pain is sending....protecting more than just the inflamed muscles.....

More Protein helps in satiety

At last we are moving away from the idea of eating 6 times a day.....Forget grazing and eat more protein.

The influence of higher protein intake and greater eating frequency on appetite control in overweight and obese men.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of dietary protein intake and eating frequency on perceived appetite, satiety, and hormonal responses in overweight/obese men. Thirteen men (age 51 +/- 4 years; BMI 31.3 +/- 0.8 kg/m(2)) consumed eucaloric diets containing normal protein (79 +/- 2 g protein/day; 14% of energy intake as protein) or higher protein (138 +/- 3 g protein/day; 25% of energy intake as protein) equally divided among three eating occasions (3-EO; every 4 h) or six eating occasions (6-EO; every 2 h) on four separate days in randomized order. Hunger, fullness, plasma glucose, and hormonal responses were assessed throughout 11 h. No protein x eating frequency interactions were observed for any of the outcomes. Independent of eating frequency, higher protein led to greater daily fullness (P < 0.05) and peptide YY (PYY) concentrations (P < 0.05). In contrast, higher protein led to greater daily ghrelin concentrations (P < 0.05) vs. normal protein. Protein quantity did not influence daily hunger, glucose, or insulin concentrations. Independent of dietary protein, 6-EO led to lower daily fullness (P < 0.05) and PYY concentrations (P < 0.05). The 6-EO also led to lower glucose (P < 0.05) and insulin concentrations (P < 0.05) vs. 3-EO. Although the hunger-related perceived sensations and hormonal responses were conflicting, the fullness-related responses were consistently greater with higher protein intake but lower with increased eating frequency. Collectively, these data suggest that higher protein intake promotes satiety and challenge the concept that increasing the number of eating occasions enhances satiety in overweight and obese men.

The whole paper is available here

EPOC again...intervals again....

That old area of dispute about the post exercise impact of exercise in terms of calorie burn has popped up again:

In a new study, researchers show that exercisers can burn as many as 200 extra calories in as little as 2.5 minutes of concentrated effort a day -- as long as they intersperse longer periods of easy recovery in a practice known as sprint interval training.

Analyzing results from the room calorimeter system showed that the volunteers burned an average of an extra 200 calories on the sprint interval workout day, despite spending just 2.5 minutes engaged in hard exercise. Though the researchers can't yet speculate on whether such efforts could translate into weight loss, Sevits and his colleagues suggest that engaging in intense, but brief, bursts of exercise could aid in weight maintenance. "Burning an extra 200 calories from these exercises a couple of times a week can help keep away that pound or two that many Americans gain each year," 

Sleep....

I have often posted on here about the importance of sleep.  If you have not yet got the message then please listen to Chris Kresser's latest podcast on Revolution Health Radio where he interviews Dan Pardi who is a scientist researching sleep and its importance for health.  Dan is also behind the superb Dan's Plan  


Anyway you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript on the site, either way it is full of some really useful and important information.

Why Most People Are Sleep-deprived and What to do About it

Best of all Dan gives some ideas for improving sleep.  Nothing about this is rocket science, but it is all good stuff.   

The thing is, I have written about this before, but my own sleep routine is not great.  I tend to get to bed too late and have been waking up in the night stressing about things.  One thing that I need to address is the internet.  I am getting too addicted to checking, checking and checking - email, twitter, facebook, google reader.  Not much is actually new or that exciting but there is this self imposed pressure to KEEP UP TO DATE....with a lot of pointless drama!  My iphone is the first thing I reach for in the morning and even sometimes if I wake in the middle of the night.  This is not healthy.

There was a good post by a backpacker in the States last week who talked about going without his phone / internet for a while and how it made him feel - truly relaxed!  It is also worth reading and reflecting on.  

Disconnected

But the experiment got me thinking, anyway. Since moving back to Keene, I've been doing things differently than last year. I've cut down drastically on my Internet usage, mostly by cutting out all of my use of forums and web communities. I used to kill hours browsing through discussions on Backpackinglight.com, but I realized I was getting nothing from that community except more and more frustration at the tone of many conversations. I read fewer blogs now, I avoid most news sites, I don't much care what news I'm missing. I feel more relaxed in general, and I now have drastically more time to read books, enjoy the home life, and work on my other projects.

Interval training....with no intervals

If you take the rest intervals out of an interval session.....you get a single all out sprint.  Why do we assume you need to do lots of separate sprints?  Just because Tabata has become a training cliche? Would we get the same effects from a single hard sprint?  Why not?

Well at last scientists are starting to look at this idea.  If we want to keep things simple, lets start with one hard sprint before we start to add complexity.

Check out what James Steele has to say about this idea and the recent new research.

Simply Single Bout Sprinting

....and of course if a single sprint works, why not just do hard resistance training, working to sequentially recruit as many fibres as possible, taking the exercises to failure?

48" single leg box jump

I've not had a big jump video on here for a while.  This is stunning......

Walking and more

I've not put anything on here for a few days.  I've been busy with work and then I've been trying to write up some stuff on my other blog about recent walks, in Austria and then on the West Highland Way.

Austria

The West Highlands

I should have a bit more time now though to put things up here.  The other thing that is going on in the back ground is a little more work on Hillfit, which might see a new expanded version of the book in a few months, with some other services around it, but it is early days.

Follow me on Twitter

I used to use a widget on this blog to share links to interesting things that I was reading via Google Reader, but they took that functionality off.  I often tweet links to things that I have come across that are of interest, so you might want to follow me on Twitter @chrishighcock if you miss that service.  I am pretty broad in my interests - fitness, diet, hillwalking......

Exercise improves brain function....

The way in which movement affects and effects brain development is something that fascinates me.  I have nothing much to say here other than to record my wonder at how something so mundane is of such importance!  Moving, practicing new skills generates new growth in the brain, new connections new specific intelligence.

I have previously pointed to Ratey's book Spark!  but there is more out there on this topic.  Tim Anderson - Becoming Bulletproof - has developed some cool ideas around applying simple tactics, like crawling.  Tim also expose me to the book Smart Moves by Carla Hannaford, which was the foundation for some of his ideas, again a very useful read.

Todd Hargrove also has a huge wealth of thinking on this topic.

Anyway, I was prompted to think about this again by this report of how Exercise improves memory, thinking after stroke

However, Ms. Marzolini says, "these results provide compelling evidence that by improving cardiovascular fitness through aerobic exercise and increasing muscle mass with resistance training, people with stroke can improve brain health."