Tag: fit

Posted in Health and Fitness

The Diet After the Diet

Posted on by Roy Eastham

So your diet is over, you’ve reached your goal weight (Congrats by the way), you feel proud after X amount of time and restricting your calories, resisting temptation of your ever-growing appetite. 

The suffering is finally over and you’re ready to live life again.

A month later you jump on the scale’s and slap yourself trying to awaken you from this nightmare. You suddenly realise that this is no dream. How can months of dieting and hard work be undone in a matter of weeks.

What do you do now, Why has this happened, Do you do another round of restrictive eating and hope it sticks this time?

Well getting the Body you want is only half the Battle, There’s the Battle of keeping the weight off as well which is just as Hard if not Harder.

It’s no secret that when we restrict our Calories our bodies react via Hormones such as Leptin Decreasing and Ghrelin Increasing along with other key hormones that play a role in weight management. Also as an effect of Diet-induced Weight loss our appetites get bigger but those hormones do not return back to normal after the diet has ended (1.) Resulting in constantly feeling more hungry and unconsciously consuming way more Calories than you think you’ve eaten. I’ve discussed this in greater detail & other concepts of the Metabolism in these articles here (2,3.)

So your Metabolism had a massive wrench thrown into its tracks, The wrench being Adaptive Thermogenesis (Metabolic Adaptation) Seriously read this (3.) When Adaptive Thermogenesis Kicks In Your BMR drops and you burn less Calories Throughout the day along with the increase in certain Hunger Hormones and Appetite it’s Going to be hard to burn more Calories than you Consume.

There’s only so much you can exercise and reduce Calories before your lifestyle becomes miserable and pretty impossible to maintain.

Let’s Use a female competitor weighing 140 pounds (64 kg) at 20 percent body fat who needs to get down to below 12 percent as an example (4.) Her maintenance diet looks something like this:

Calories: 2350 calories a day
Protein: 30 percent, 176 g/day
Fat: 30 percent, 78 g/day
Carbs: 40 percent. 235 g/day

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Posted in Health and Fitness

Weight loss vs Fat loss

Posted on by Roy Eastham

Weight Loss vs Fat Loss

When the majority of people go on a diet they say they want to lose weight whilst pointing to the areas of their body with excessive fat… Or you get that person who has a frustratingly good figure yet they constantly saying they need to lose weight and you just wanna punch them in the face…

Both these people in the scenarios will go on a diet and lose weight and still will not be happy when they look in the mirror after the weight loss…

Playing the weight loss gain the only thing you people care about is the numbers on the scale.

However that weight loss could come from anywhere Water, Muscle tissue not specifically fat and the very next day or even after a cup or 2 of water they could be very disappointed when that weight has come back…

When You Lose weight, You lose it from both Fat and Muscle and Its Muscle that gives us the ‘Toned’ Look many people are after. Instead of that mushy pear look that we gain after weight loss.

Weight loss also triggers the metabolism to react and slow down whilst signalling hunger hormones such as ghrelin to increase this is known as Adaptive Thermogenesis…
And basically, you are going to be hungry wit excessive cravings whilst having to cut even more calories to keep losing weight.

And also when you give in to the hunger which eventually you will your metabolic rate is a lot lower so you are going to experience rapid weight gain…

Basically, Weight loss Sucks…

Fat loss on the other hand is where we preserve as much lean muscle as possible whilst losing body fat.. Giving you the desired lean/toned look you’re after.

Not only do you look more toned but the more lean tissue you have the higher your metabolic  rate will be (meaning you get to eat more without fat gain)

The only problem with fat loss is that many people think the diet isn’t working because the numbers on the scale aren’t going down so they give up or take drastic measures. Despite them looking and feeling better. The reason the numbers on the scale don’t drop as much is that your preserving muscle (This is a good thing.)

Posted in Health and Fitness, Mental Health

Stress and The Brain

Posted on by Roy Eastham

This is a chapter from Your Head Is Not An Island, Click Here to get your free copy

Stress has been known to literally shrink the brain (59,90) as well as disrupting brain function and promoting inflammation. Stress is notorious for being difficult to define. It encompasses all kinds of stimuli of varying amounts of aversiveness and duration (102). Stress can be physical, psychological, social, acute or chronic, and high or low intensity (103-4) Stress can be defined as an automatic physical response to any stimulus that requires you to adjust to change. Every real or perceived threat to your body triggers a cascade of stress hormones that produces physiological changes. We all know the sensations: your heart pounds, muscles tense, breathing quickens, and beads of sweat appear. This is known as the stress response (62.)

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Posted in Health and Fitness, Mental Health

Vegetarians & Mental Health

Posted on by Roy Eastham

I know a lot of Vegetarians and Vegans and the majority of them are healthy, happy and ridiculously strong. On the contrary, I also know several that struggle with mental illness, So I wanted to see if there was a connection between Not eating meat and Mental illness.

Findings – 

9,668 men who were partners of pregnant women took the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Seven per cent of the vegetarians obtained scores indicating severe depression compared to four per cent of non-vegetarians. 

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