Q&A Sesh: Do I have to do 45 mins of cardio to burn fat?

Do I have to do cardio for 45 mins to burn fat?

This question was asked of me the other night - a well known (but questionable) Body Transformation program has said this is the case.

As someone who has studied Cert III and Cert IV in fitness, and read a million articles on the topic - the answer is very very clear, and very resounding NO.

The science behind burning fat is that the body uses a mixture of fuel sources for exercise - usually  a combination of glucose (in your bloodstream) and  fat.  Fat is more difficult to burn, glucose is very easy.  So initially when you start to exercise, you will predominantly burn glucose, and a small amount of fat. As time goes on and the amount of glucose readily available in your blood stream decreases, the body burns greater and greater percentages of fat, and less and less glucose.  At some point it switches over and the majority of the burn is from fat.  So you are burning fat right from the beginning, just smaller amounts.  Don't disregard any amount of cardio as a fat burner.

However there are far more effective ways of burning fat that don't require you to exercise for so long.

See what Coach Calorie has to say about it below:
from www.coachcaloric.com

Goal: Drop Weight

Mistake: Walking or running at one pace.
Leisurely strolling on the treadmill or the elliptical for a solid 45 minutes may get you sweating, which will help with temporary weight loss, but there are more effective strategies for your longer term goals. I'm assuming if your goal is to see the scale go down you probably want the weight you lose to be from fat. The most effective cardio workout for fat loss is interval training.
The Fix: Interval training.
Instead of shuffling along reading your magazine or watching TV, get ready to work.
The bad news is you'll need to work harder than you have been working. The good news is you can go for a shorter period of time.
Plan on a 20- to 30-minute workout. Warm up for 5 to 10 minutes, then perform a 30s-90s interval at a pace you couldn't hold for longer than that. Your heart rate should be above 85 percent of your max heart rate or at a point where you couldn't carry on a conversation. Follow with equal or more recovery period at an easier pace, letting your heart rate come down to under 70 perecent of max. Repeat for 5 to 10 rounds.


How does this interval training sound?  If you were at my class last night -you would know that its an exact match for our HiiT Class.
So do yourself a fatburn favour - and join me next Wednesday night at 6pm for HiiT - your 37min express checkout to fitness!

The Meaning Behind Numbers....

Aren't numbers a funny thing.  To some people they mean nothing, and to others, like me, they are almost everything.

Each week, I try and extend the distance of my long run by 10%.  I'm trying to get back to a comfortable 2hr run distance following a calf injury about 6 months ago.

This week the plan was set for the full 2 hours.  I decided to run on the treadmill (not my favourite) because last time I did this due to rain the recovery was fantastic.  The downside is that its boring - but I overcome this will TV shows on my ipad, and that I can't run as fast on the treadmill - something to do with my technique.  I have to run by feel, not by speed which means I have to slow down the number of the pace. Never mind, I tell myself - long runs are not about speed, they are about endurance, about how long you turn the legs over for.  In fact, slower is better for building mitochondria.  As long as I do my two hours, the pace doesnt matter.

Except after 30 mins my calf was aching/tired, and I was worried about re-injuring.  So I walked for about 5 mins, and then discovered if I slowed my pace even further, it didn't hurt.  No matter - it doesn't matter how far I go in the 2 hours, it doesn't matter how fast, as long as I run the 2 hours.

Then I was interrupted by a visitor looking for hubby.  Had to get off the treadmill, run and find him, and 10 mins later get back on.  At about the 1hr30 mark I realised the treadmill was showing a different time to my watch - and then realised that the watch was out because of the interruption.  Have to go by the time on the treadmill.  No probs.  Except then I knocked the treadmill and the timer re-set.  Grrr. restart.  How many minutes had I done?  Exactly?  And then I noticed I hadn't worn my pedometer, so my watch wasn't recording distance either (to upload my workout to my computee, it was only recording time, which we've already established was wrong). I ran another half hour, cause I knew I had seen some time frame after 1 hr 30, but what exactly I didn't know.

And now, at the end of the run, I feel totally disatisfied with my achievement.  Even though in my mind, I know I must have run at least 2hrs, even though I watched an episode of the Mentalist (45 mins) and episode of the Good Wife (45 mins), and 30 mins of another episode (totalling 2hrs) - not having a solid record - a number in front of me that I can record, leaves me feeling disatisfied and almost cheated. Even though my legs are aching and telling me that I've challenged them, its not the same.   Yes, I know, some people wont relate to this at all, but for me, it appears, everything is about the numbers!  Are you a numbers person?  Do you need them to be motivated or pushed?

I hope you like these numbers better!

Week 6 Results

1st Place - Kel D - 1.54% 
2nd Place - Sarah U - 1.11%
3rd Place - Maree C - 0.89%

Overall
1st Place - Kel D - 14.01%
2nd Place - Julie R - 7.68%
3rd Place - Sophie T - 7.33%


Well done girls.  You have some close challengers though - so stay on track over Easter!

Achievable. Yep, you heard me

Have a look at this gorgeous photo of Erin Stern.  You could achieve this if you really wanted. Dont shake your head, yes, you could.  Its not genetics, its about eating clean and training hard consistently over a long period of time.  Its really just about how miuh you want it, how much you are prepared to do, and WHAT YOU SET YOUR SIGHTS ON.  Im going to achieve it.  i work on it every day.

Maybe this is isnt the body of your dreams. But what is?  Find a picture of it and put it somewhere front and centre.  Dont be limited by how you look now, or what others tell you is possible. This limits your achievement.  Aim low, achieve low.  Did you know that many fitness models used to have weight problems until they set their minds to change their life.  (Gillian Michaels is a prime example). What the mind believes, the body will achieve.

What do you need to do?  Eat clean, train hard.  Embark on a journey to discover what these terms actually mean.  Cause yes, I'll say it again, bodies like Erin's dont come from exhausting yourself with cardio everyday, you need a good strong weight training routine.  And eating clean doesnt mean eating a schnitzel on a freshly polished floor!  Choose your goal picture now.  Aim high and visualise it every time the going gets tough.  Remember, it IS achievable.

Q&A Sesh

What should I be doing to get that Ultimate Bod?  Cardio or Weights?

We all know that cardio burns lots of calories, our Heart Rate Monitors tell us this.  But unless we are planning on developing a super sculpted heart muscle, its not just the heart that we want to be pumping, its all the other muscles as well.  After all - you could wear a HR monitor, get very excited about something - record a high heart rate and supposedly burn lots of extra calories.  Not really.  HR is just one indicator as to how hard we are working.

If you read lots of fitness mags, and look at all the fitness models, they all have one thing in common:  they prioritise weight training above cardio.  Lifting heavy weights burns a lot of calories, whether your heart rate goes up high or not.  Plus, what we really want - is to develop a body that is a furnace when it comes to food.  A body that will allow us to enjoy the good things in life, AND still look good.  Being 'skinny fat' wont do this for you.  If you lose weight through cardio, and dont weight train, your body will still be high in body fat/low in muscle.  You might have small thighs, but they will be flabby, the waist may be smaller than it used to, but there will still be the "pot".  AND you will regain weight very easily as there is no muscle mass to maintain.  Muscle requires/burns a lot of calories just at rest.  Fat doesn't.

So really, the ultimate aim is change the composition of your body - increase muscle - decrease fat to develop a great looking bod.

A couple of things about gaining muscle:
1.  Its really hard for women - forget thinking you will look like the incredible hulk.  To become the first Incredible Hulkette - you will probably need to take steroids -so no real risk here

2. You wont be gaining much muscle from cardio.  In fact, too much cardio without the correct diet and rest may have the opposite effect.

3. To build muscle, you must engage in resistance exercise (either weights, or body weight) and you must give the muscles you have trained  - 48 hours to recover afterwards.  Yep, that's two days.  So if you do a lot of leg work one day - say weighted squats, lunges etc, you shouldn't repeat these exercises, or similar ones for 2 days.  When you push these muscles out of their comfort zone, you are aiming to break down the muscle fibres.  The body will then go into adaptation mode, and rebuild the muscles stronger than before so it can cope better next time.  But it does this during rest, not during  exercise.  If you repeat these exercises too soon, you will further break down the muscles, to the point at which they can no longer repair, and the muscle tissue will deteriorate, not build bigger and better.

4.  Therefore - you need to plan your exercise schedule.  Body builders get around the 48 recovery period by splitting their weight training into different muscle groups on different (consecutive) days.  Eg Biceps Chest and Abs one day - Triceps, Back and Shoulders the next, Legs on the third day.  Or you can train all muscle groups in one session on alternate days. Obviously a split routine allows you to spend more time on individual muscle groups.  For good results - you need to be weight training at least 3 times/week.  So plan in your weight sessions, and then work your cardio around this.  Whatever you do, don't bunch together similar training regimes into short periods of time.  This is a case of where "more" is not always "better".

5.  Quality of training and good technique is vitally important.  Use poor technique and risk an injury.  Perform an exercise that you are not ready because it looks super hard and you are "gun ho" and not only do you risk injury but you risk developing poor habits, poor posture and not achieving your goals.  Where-ever possible have your routine set up by a qualified instructor who can take into account your needs and abilities.  One size doesn't fit all.

3 You need to eat enough protein at the right times of day to feed muscle recovery.  Lots of training and no

At Last...

Week   4 Results:

1st - Sophie T 1.55%
2nd - Kerry L : 1.37%
3rd - Kel D: 1.3%

Week 4 - Overall:
1st: Kel D: 11.35%
2nd: Julie R 6.76%
3rd:  Deb S - 6.68%


Week 5 Results:

1st: Maree C - 1.75%
2nd: Sophie T - 1.55%
3rd: Kel D - 1.12%

Week 5 Overall:
1st Kel D: 12.47%
2nd: Deb S: 7.55
3rd: Sophie T 6.88%

Ahh  - congratulations to you all - some new faces on the leaderboard too, and quite a few just missing out by fractions of percentages - so no-one is safe!  Work hard to keep your positions

Defeat, Success and New Challenges

Well I have to admit defeat on analysing your results this week.  You will get a double wammy of results on Sunday, plus two weeks worth of leader boards to impress you!

On the other hand, I have successfully edited the post about exercise so that its readable.  If you spend a lot of time doing cardio as your main form of exercise, or you hate cardio and think that you will never lose weight without being miserable, this is for you.  Scroll down and have a read of it now.

The most successful body transformations are actually centred around weight training.  Pick up any fitness magazine, look at the girls with the gorgeous bodies and read what they do to achieve their shape.  Its all about weight training, and not just once a week.

In line with this, I read a great easy Oxygen magazine the other week with 15 minute weight workouts.  Its available electronically on your iPad, or its a 2013 release so I'm guessing its in the stores

The photos below give you some ideas of what's in there.  Basically, if you've got time to go on facebook - you've got time to do a 15 minute workout.  Couple 1, 2 or 3 of the different body part workouts together, and you've got a comprehensive weights workout. Most of them only require dumbells.  One suggestion here - if you are ever looking to buy dumbells for home, I recommend saving up and buying a 20kg adjustable set (available in most sports stores) for about $80.  Once you train regularly, 2 and 3 kg weights become a bit useless, and you need  a variety of different weights for different muscle groups.  It will prove to be a great investment.

I plan to post soon on Chia Seeds  - my new love - but I promise to focus on your results first!  I'm off for a run, look forward to hearing all the email "pings" as your results come in tomorrow!

Do You Need to Do Cardio to Lose Weight?

Here's an article from CoachCalorie about the role exercise plays in weight loss,  that I think is rather accurate.

Except for one point.  As someone who has worked in health for 30 years, and is the director of a community health service, I am compelled to point out that this article was written from the perspective how to lose weight, improve body composition and look great.
The National Activity Guidelines for adults state that you need to exercise for a minimum of 30 mins/day most days of the week in some form of exercise that makes you huff and puff, for cardiovascular (heart) health.  Different goals, different exercise needs.  Just keep this in mind.

Is Cardio Necessary to Lose Weight?

Written by Tony Schober ·

When most people embark on a weight loss program, one of the first things they think about is cardio. How much should they do? How often? How long should you do it for? These are all great questions, but the real question should be – is cardio necessary to lose weight?
What is Required for Weight Loss?
In order to lose weight, you need to do one very important thing – you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. All these minute details don’t matter if you aren’t creating a calorie deficit. You could be lifting weights 3 times a week, doing HIIT cardio on your non weight training days, eating whole foods, and managing your stress levels, but none of that matters if you aren’t creating a calorie deficit.

Sure, you can still lose fat while maintaining your weight or even increasing it. Weight and fat are not always one in the same. However, if you want to get lighter, the calories that you are storing on your body need to be burned off. You can’t do that with a calorie surplus.
How Can You Create a Calorie Deficit?
There are a few different ways for you to create a calorie deficit. They will all give you very different results in body composition. For example, you could:

• Create it Through Diet Alone – Yes, you can lose weight without any exercise. You will also lose quite a bit of muscle in the process. However, by simply eating fewer calories than you burn, you can lose weight. If you eat 2,000 calories a day to maintain your weight, reducing your calories to 1,500/day will theoretically net you 1 pound of weight loss per week.
• Create it Through Exercise Alone – Let’s say that without any exercise, you can eat 2,000 calories a day and maintain your weight. To lose weight, you could keep your calories at 2,000/day and create a calorie deficit through exercise. If you burn 500 calories per day through exercise, you can lose 1 pound per week.
• Create it Through Diet and Exercise – You can also create a calorie deficit through a combination of diet and exercise. For example, you could reduce your 2,000 calorie diet by 500 calories through diet, and then another 500 calories through exercise – netting you a daily 1,000 calorie deficit, resulting in 2 pounds of weight loss per week.

While these 3 methods for creating a calorie deficit will all help you lose weight, only the ones that include exercise will provide a stimulus to your muscles to keep them from wasting away while dieting. Your ratio of fat loss to muscle loss will be much greater if you include exercise. Muscle boosts your metabolism and helps keep fat loss humming right along.

Is Cardio Necessary to Lose Weight?

OK, so back to the question at hand – is cardio necessary to lose weight? Based on the above facts – no, it is not necessary to lose weight. Will it help you lose weight? Yes it can if you’re using it to create a calorie deficit. However, if you’re doing cardio without a calorie deficit, you can obviously forget about any kind of weight loss.

Of all the methods for creating a calorie deficit, I’m the biggest fan of creating it through exercise alone. This method will allow you to eat the most food, get in the most nutrients, while at the same time building and maintaining the most muscle – all while dropping a high percentage of body fat.

What Kind of Exercise is Best?

Plain and simple, resistance exercise is going to give you the biggest return on your time. Cardio is nice, but if you are strength training a few times a week at a high intensity, then dedicated cardio sessions aren’t even necessary to lose weight. Cardiovascular training is great, and you should do it, but separating cardio and strength training, or even prioritizing cardio sessions as your primary means to weight loss can be a waste of time.

My point in this article is not to demonize cardiovascular training. What I’m trying to do is show you that the idea of dedicated cardio sessions, like so many people do on the treadmill, stationary bike, or elliptical, are totally unnecessary or possibly even counterproductive. Prioritize strength training, and if you want to do cardiovascular training, find ways to increase the intensity of your strength training workouts.

Keep your diet spot on, and create a calorie deficit through high-intensity strength training, and you will begin to notice that you don’t have to labor day in and day out on the treadmill to get results. Be smart about your food choices and how much you eat, and push yourself in the gym when you do go, be active, and you will begin to see great improvements in your body composition.

The Key to success is....

....Perseverance

At the moment I am struggling to find the time to calculate your results.  Yes, I have them, no I havent done them.  Life is a bit of a rollercoaster for me at the moment, and if i dont do them Sunday morning (and this was messed up by the long weekend), I really struggle to find another block of time to do them.  Very sorry, but I will persevere, hopefully tomorrow.

But thats not an excuse for you to slacken off!  Ive spoken about and seen a few people's results this week, and there are a few who havent had a good week.  This is my message to you.  This is the point at which unsuccessful people give up....successful people dig their heels in and work harder!  DONT GIVE UP WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH!

Just like my last post, that Ive just seen did not display correctly, I WILL get it right eventually, and you WILL transform your body, just never give up!

When a Kg is more than a Kg...

The other day I posted about whether a calorie is a just a calorie and today another conundrum....

If someone came to see me for advice about "losing weight" 12 months ago, and at the end of those 12 months had lost 1 kg on the scales, you'd be guessing they were not too happy about their results.  Right?

But what about if in the 12 months, the before and after photos looked like this:

This is Matt, a facebook friend of mine from Adelaide.  And its not my work, its his (obviously) and his trainer's Philip Ward from PumpedUp Personal Training.  Before photo - 80kgs, After photo 79kgs.

You see, once again its fantastic evidence of why scales don't tell the story that you are looking for.  Matt is certainly not disappointed with his 1kg loss weight loss - he described as the best investment he ever made.  In fact he lost about 9% body fat and gained a lot of lean muscle mass.  Think about the figures I send you each week - if you are doing things right your lean muscle mass should be going up, and your body fat going down.

Many of you are making great gains that lead to these sort of results - regardless of what the scales tell you. In fact two people on the leaderboard at the moment haven't lost more than a kg or so - but their measurements and changing bodies tell a different story don't they?

Next post is about whether you need to exercise to lose weight, and if you do, what sort of exercise should it be.  What are your thoughts?

Its a Protest Flag Kinda Day....

...well not a protest really, but true to my prediction of not being perfect - I did miss somone's measurements AND they had really good results which requires adjustments to the leader board ...
As follows:


Week 3 Revised Results:
1st Place - Kels D - 2.69%
2nd Place - Soph T  -2.13%
3rd Place - Sonya I - 1.74%
4th  Place - Andrea B - 1.43%

Overall
1st Place - Kels D - 10.05 %
2nd Place   Julie R -  6.3%
3rd Place - Deb S - 5.84%

Well done Sophie - and I'm sorry I missed you out!

But it does give me the opportunity to make one more comment.

As I enter the results into the database each week, I can only see one person's results at a time.  So I keep an updating chart next to me of who currently holds the top three spots, for the week and overall.  I enter the first three results into the chart, and with every new result I look to see if they knock anyone off the current top spots, and if they do, I replace their name. I do them in order of receiving them (first in first done)  Get the idea?  But what I've noticed over the last two weeks - and it could be purely coincidence  - but its interesting to think about - is that I am rarely knocking anyone off list as time goes on.  The leaders usually are the ones who have their stats in the earliest

Have a look:
Kel D - Sat 8:36am
Soph T - Sat 6:22 am
Sonya I - Sat 9.15 am
Andrea B - Sat 9.59 am
Julie R - Sat 7:24 am
Deb S - Sat 9:54 am

I received results right through until Sunday at 8:44pm -

Interesting huh? is it because those that send them in early are more motivated, or more confident that they have done well, or up earlier exercising (LoL), or more desperate to see how they have done?

I have no idea really - but I'm a very reflective person and found this quite interesting!

Week 3 Results....

At the beginning of week 4 - its easy to lose some motivation - but pushing through now will cement good habits and then you wont need motivation so much, the newer fitter you will be ingrained in your psyche!
A few measurements are missing this week - if you've dropped off over the last week or two - don't give up - just pick up where you left off and send 'em in again.

But here they are - some people are just awesome!

This week
1st Place - Kels D - 2.69%
2nd Place - Sonya I - 1.74%
3rd Place - Andrea B - 1.43%

Overall
1st Place - Kels D - 10.05 %
2nd Place   Julie R -  6.3%
3rd Place - Deb S - 5.84%

Now some of these people are bound to run out of steam soon - will you be there next week to knock them off their perch?

If you have not received your results as yet,(it means I have missed them)  or I have made a mistake  - please let me know - I try to be perfect but occasionally its possible I might fail!

Also - just  a reminder to keep the email subject exactly the same as the first email you received, so that your results filter into my special magical folder! I'm also expecting 2 more people to introduce themselves - perhaps it should be you?

Hoping to post this week about challenging perceptions and exercise, so keep an eye out for them,  and here's to another great week!

My Clean Eating Kitchen

Well, whilst the results of this week are flooding in, I thought I might take the time to comment on Clean Eating, after my post about Macronutritients.

Macronutrients are about what classification or broad category of food we put in our bodies, but you will hear a lot of talking about Clean Eating. 
"Clean Eating means to eat foods that are as close to their natural state as possible, and avoid foods that are highly processed and loaded with preservatives.  This unclean way of eating overloads the liver and digestive system making it difficult for the body to function to the best of its abilty."  (Clean Eating Recipes App)
So clean eating helps to cover the Micronutrient aspects of nutrition - ensuring that you don't clog your body with preservatives, refined flours, sugar etc, and focusses on raw, fresh, whole foods.

I've been trying to eat this way for some time - and above is a photo of a typical lunch for me (well not so typical if you know me as I don't usually eat much red meat, but today I just happened to).  And this year I've really been trying to tighten up on it further by cutting out sugar, and eating more raw food/whole grains with the help of my new Vitamix.

So this year, I cleaned up my pantry to turn it into a "clean eating" pantry. There is a Clean Eating Recipe App available for your phone - and it also has a list of foods that would be found in a clean eating pantry - so I followed this to fine tune what I already had.  So here's what my pantry and fridge look like now:

 

Yes, I have a lot of tupperware!  The top couple of shelves are devoted to grains and flours: quinoa, barley, rye, oats, wheat flours, spelt flour, coconut flour, quinoa flour etc, and then polenta, cous, cous,chick peas, broad beans, rice, etc. Then there are shelves stocked with dried fruit, nuts and seeds

Then canned foods, and condiments, and on the bottom shelf the big container is my concession to Tessa, where she keeps her "snacks" for school, and my coffee pods for the Nespresso.

The fridge has dairy and some leftovers on the top two shelves, and then its brimming with fruit and veg which I have trouble keeping up a sufficient supply.  And yes, in the bottom corner there is a box of Favourites that was given to us and I've been harping at my hubby to finish off!

 

So what's in your fridge and pantry - but more importantly, what's in yours that doesn't feature in mine?  Should it be there if you want to eat healthily?  One of the things we look for at the health service is the percentage of unhealthy foods displayed in our kiosks and vending machines. The rule of thumb is no more than 20%  What percentage of space is consumed by things that are not the best choices and vice versa - can you change this and help both yourself and your family?

 

Just some "food for thought" on a Saturday morning.  If you don't see the results you want this morning - perhaps a stocktake is in order?