Exercise void of good nutrition cancels out fat loss.

On reading the headline you are probably saying to yourself, “I know this already, it's not rocket science". But the underlying message I am going to try and unearth for you isn't as simple as the title suggests. It is common to hear of individuals making the sacrifice to exercise and attend to part of their lifestyle in a bid to lose body fat however nutrition and diet are not even addressed. They think because they are exercising they are automatically going to lose weight. In fact if exercise is undertaken that is vigorous and of high intensity, without adequate nutritional habits you can actually increase the percentages of lifestyle conditions occurring and fat loss definitely won’t be happening.

Again I am probably going to sound like a broken record here but if one aspect of your lifestyle efforts is adhered to and others aren't, then the likelihood of overcompensating in that area is greatly increased. As is commonly reported, exercise is carried out daily to cover for poor nutritional habits. Stress of exercise plus the stress of incorrect food options has no option but to equal double stress. They can't equal each other out. The sad fact is exercise is usually then carried out for longer to use up more calories in a bid to counteract poor nutritional habits; more stress!!! Subsequently going the other way and concentrating solely on restricting intake and focusing on your intake and not getting active is just as bad if not worse.

What is needed is a great balance between exercise - High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and good nutrition. The beauty of combining HIIT and good nutritional habits is you will be fast racking the fat loss process by stopping long laborious exercise periods and eating better quality foods in smaller quantities. Doesn't this sound like a more inviting alternative to losing excess body fat stores?

Hormone manipulation to aid fat loss

Your hormones play a major part in the fat loss process. You don’t need to know the whys and hows but I will map out the process. If you stick to this process you will be guaranteed faster body fat reduction results.

There are four steps to follow and I will list them in this article to give you an understanding of why you will be training in this manner.

1. High Intensity - Make sure you stick to the guidelines and complete your exercises at around 90% exertion. Especially your interval cardio work. But also your resistance training.
2. Short Duration - Do not exceed the recommended time frame for interval repetitions. If you do you aren’t exercising at a high enough intensity.
3. Adequate Recovery - A very important point because as you may well be conditioned to believe exercising at a constant tempo without recovery in an attempt to increase fitness. It will harm your fat loss results if you do not recover adequately in between intervals. Use your full allotted time for recovery. By not allowing enough recovery you place your body under repeated stress that will make your hormonal system start to produce hormones that immediately stop the fat loss process.
4. Lactic Acid Production - You must feel the burn. If you don’t feel the lactic acid burning sensation in your exercised muscles then you aren’t sticking to the number 1 principle. Work harder. Remember your interval repetitions are virtually a full effort sprint.
   In your resistance exercises it will increase the body fat reducing effects if you are pushing yourself as hard as you can and feeling that slight lactic acid burning sensation.

So there you have it. You are probably thinking this sounds too quick as like most others you have been lead to believe fat loss involves long steady state exercise without getting your heart above a certain rate. Well forget that and get up to speed and blast that excess body fat away with High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

Does EPOC have any effect on Hormones?

You are probably wondering now you have got all this information on how to get started on your weight loss journey, what effect does this high intense training have on your body? Today you will discover a few things that may be of interest to you on what effect EPOC has and how it affects you. After all knowledge is power as they say.

Hormonal signals are powerful dictators that decide which fuel or metabolic engine you use; sugar versus fat. Therefore, hormones manage much more then just calorie input and output. The body is like an engine that can choose between two fuels. Fat is = to diesel, it will get you far but it won't provide much performance and sugar is like a high-octane fuel and delivers exceptional performance but horrible mileage. These hormonal messengers decide which fuel dominates. The body burns both fuels but in reality the body becomes efficient at burning what you feed it. So to lose body fat you must train it to utilise body fat as a fuel source. This is enhanced by reducing added sugar from the diet but also keeping the bodies stress levels in check.

When the body becomes stressed hormones that stop the body fat burning process are released. On the other hand body fat burning will occur if you can keep stress managed. Don’t let anyone tell you stress shouldn’t be in your life as this is false and very unrealistic. This is where EPOC is perfect for fat loss and to get EPOC you would be well advised to undertake High Intensity Interval Training(HIIT).

HIIT with resistance (above) versus long slow running (below) for fat loss - Give me HIIT any day

Exercise is a stress that the body needs but too much will start recruiting the hormones that stop fat burning. This is why exercise involving intervals allows you to stress the body and then let it recover and then again and again. Where as long slow cardio training keeps the body stressed for long periods which as you have just learnt will stop any fat burning from taking place. So keep getting into the HIIT and start burning off that excess body fat.

EPOC Part 2 - Start the Fire

Back again to give you some very handy tips on the way that you can start burning of those extra unwanted kilos. Remember EPOC is short for Excess Post Exercise-Oxygen Consumption. The best thing it doesn’t involve going to a gym or adding weights, treadmills, rowing machines or bikes. All you need is yourself and the desire to start this fire! Like I said in Part 1 the aim is to get the heart rate as high as possible during exercise so that we can get the EPOC - start the fire effect happening and now to give you some very handy pointers on how you can get this fire started.

By doing resistance training in the form of intervals for EPOC the better your fitness level gets the more you have to push your body! Just a few things on what EPOC is actually doing to your body before we get into the action. High-intensity interval training directly improves endurance performance including oxygen transport from lungs to muscles. By improving your endurance performance you increase your maximum oxygen intake which simply put means you are becoming fitter. During training in order to improve your performance you need to be increasing the EPOC values of the training effect. Now you are a full bottle on EPOC you are probably anxious to find out how to train in order to get these effects happening. Just remember everyone has different fitness levels so don’t expect to achieve elite status efforts immediately like an Olympic athlete if you have been sedentary or are a little out of condition!

Here are a few ways to start the fire with high intensity resistance type interval training!

Are you ready for this?

If you have a raised surface in your backyard or even in the house that you can use to do step ups on you can complete 20 seconds worth of step ups on the raised platform and then take 30 seconds to rest. Repeat the activity four times.

A step up - if you aren't sure

Push ups a great compound exercise because your are using your full body. So using the same format as the step ups you can do 20 seconds worth of push ups and then have 30 seconds rest. Again do this four times.

The one and only - push up

If that’s too easy I recommend doing 30 seconds with 30 seconds rest for four sets. This is just two of many great ways you can start the fire. Hopefully this will give you a little inspiration to go and experiment with HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training).

Please feel free to let me know how this went for you. Your comments may well inspire others to get more active as well!!!

EPOC Part 1 - Start the Fire

Back again to talk about fat loss and burning those calories by using High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). This week it’s about EPOC which stands for Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. This can also be defined as the “recovery of your metabolic rate back to pre exercise levels”. This can take several minutes if only doing low intensity workouts or up to 38 hours if doing intensive interval training. EPOC is a fat loss gift that keeps on giving!

The lunge is commonly utilised in HIIT

Basically you keep burning calories at an increased rate after an interval workout or a high intensity resistance training session if you train this way, but if you do choose to train at a lower intensity you won’t get the same effect, your metabolism will stop burning calories soon after the activity. This is quite a new form of training a lot of people don’t know about and are still training the old fat burning zone methods or just long, slow cardio workouts where they are sitting on treadmills, bikes and rowing machines for hours keeping their heart rates steady. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying this isn’t good for you but it won’t burn calories as effectively if it’s fat loss you are looking for. HIIT is ideal for creating EPOC and as a consequence a more time efficient way to lose body fat. What is actually happening is you train at an intensity that causes you to create an oxygen debt (your muscles don’t get enough oxygen so lactic acid is created). Due to this debt created you must get oxygen to pay the debt back. This occurs in the period following your training or activity. It doesn’t mean you have to be gasping furiously for breath like a fish out of water but it does mean a lot higher intensity is needed to get the desired EPOC effect.

Another way of looking at it is HIIT can cause a bushfire effect by creating EPOC inside you. Think of a big bush fire, you know it doesn’t just burn for 2 hours and then burn out-it slowly burns out so that over time there is no fire anymore. The peak of the fire may have been hours ago but there are still flames being produced for a long time afterwards. That is how HIIT and EPOC works but with calories instead of fire so the aim is that we can keep the fire going as long as we can which means calories burn while you’re sleeping or sitting down in your office the next day and you don’t even realise it.

You want your metabolism firing like this to lose body fat

Come back to Café Cacophony soon to see some interesting ideas as to how to get EPOC or to start your internal fire burning.

EVERYONE WANTS FAT LOSS

Everyone wants to lose a bit of fat from their body let's be completely honest. There’s not to a lot of people who want to stay exactly like they are and that are completely happy with there bodies. If its getting off the couch you struggle with or getting out of bed 30 minutes earlier or being too busy with work and using that as an excuse. You need to accept that it's very unlikely you will shed those couple of kilos.

I hope he can sew!!!

I have something I think you will want to hear. I've been researching a lot on fat loss and have read up on lots of different things but a very common and interesting thing that keeps popping up in front of me is the word nutrition. It is a key component in fat loss. If you don’t have a good nutrition plan then you will soon realise loosing weight as quickly as you would like is not going to be unrealistic As a result of that when you combine both good nutrition and exercise into your daily life you will find better results a lot quicker than just working out and eating the wrong things.

On the work outs side of things the interesting new style of training that has taken over in the fitness industry for weights loss is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). This is a way of training that is designed to be shorter but at a much higher intensity then the average work out whether it be body weight circuit training or weights or short sprints down at the park this is a very effective way to loose weight but also when doing HIIT you only burn fat you don’t loose muscle. After doing all this research and study on fat loss I have found out that going to the gym to do cardio for a hours at a very slow pace is a lot less effective than HIIT. If its weight loss that you are looking for I can tell you right now that less work at a higher intensity is going to allow you to burn off those extra kilos quicker!

Stay tuned and keep checking back regularly as I am going to give away heaps of information on how to lose body fat effectively and quicker. The motto for you now should be quality not quantity. Our next brew will serve up one important reason why HIIT burns body fat quicker than longer and slower cardio training (which the masses believe is the only way to lose weight). Speak soon.