Fitness

Have you had a look at my new YouTube channel? There are videos on there about improving your consistency, and about why you're not getting the results you're hoping for from your current workout... And more to come soon! I'd love to know what you're struggling with most on your health and fitness journey, so I can write articles and make videos to better help you. Please reply to this message and let me know. We all know that everything in our bodies is connected... But do we really understand what that means? Our hormones are the messengers which control how our bodies work. Our brain receives signals and sends messages to the appropriate gland - and the hormones released by that gland have a knock on effect on all of the other glands and the hormones they produce. This impacts how we feel in the short term, and our health in the long term. It's incredible - our bodies are machines of adaptation - and also quite eye opening to realise that something relatively simple can affect our whole system. Let's look at stress - let's understand how the HPA axis works. It's a conversation between our brain and our adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones. It starts with some kind of stress. It could be seeing an emergency, drinking a shot of espresso or reading an infuriating email - it's all the same to our bodies. The hypothalamus in our brain receives the message and tells our pituitary gland (also in our brain) that there's some stress and we're going to need stress hormones making. The pituitary gland sends a message to our adrenal glands to ask them to produce stress hormones, which they do, and then send a message back to the pituitary to say they've done it…

Carb loading is a bit of an outdated thing, yet, most people would think of loading up on carbs a day or two ahead of any endurance effort. The principle is that by increasing the amount of carbs stored in your body over the week before the event means you have more glycogen available for energy. Carb loading has been studied for years, and it can be useful for longer duration, constant paced activities. There are no benefits for shorter duration activities or for weight training. The issue with carb loading is the effect throughout your whole system. How energetic you feel after a carb heavy lunch... Do you feel geared up for a long activity? This is because the higher carb intake has an impact on your blood sugar levels, which have a knock on effect on your whole system. But, it's not just about the blood sugar balance. Carbs actually affect how the muscles work, and how much energy is them. When we're eating carbs to fuel endurance activity, a by-product called lactate is produced. When lactate builds up our muscular contraction and the energy in our muscles both reduces. On the completely and utterly opposite end of the spectrum, we have ketosis where we can use fat as fuel for endurance efforts rather than glucose from carbs. This approach is better from a blood sugar and digestive happiness point of view and can be effective - possible even allowing you to perform better than you would on a carb based diet. However it often take several months to truly adapt to using fat as fuel so it's not a choice you can make lightly. The other issue with keto is that it hasn't been studied for exercise for as long as carbs have, and the studies are almost…