One month of winter weight gain can hang around for years!

Did you know that weight gained over a short period of time (such as the middle of winter) can hang around for years?  Researchers who conducted a study published in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism asked volunteers to overeat fast food and limit their exercise for just four weeks. They were expecting them to gain weight, and then return to their starting weight at the end of the study. What they found however, was that after two and half years, the study participants were still more than three kilos heavier than when the study began.

Don’t let it happen to you this winter. Here are 10 ways to come out the other side of this winter in great shape. 

 

Don’t be too hot in bed

Don’t get too cozy under your doona this winter. Being too warm can actually prevent you from getting a good night’s sleep, which can spell bad news for your waistline. Researchers at Columbia University found that people who get 7 to 9 hours sleep a night are 50% less likely to be obese, than those who get less than 5 hrs.

So what’s that got to do with your doona? When your core temperature drops, you get your best sleep, so if your body is too warm, you’ll find it difficult to get your best sleep. The optimal temperature for you to get your best sleep is 15 to 20 degrees C.

 

If you succumb to a cold, be extra vigilant with your food intake

Not only can feeling less than 100% make you feel less inclined to exercise, a cold virus itself can make you pile on the kilos. There is evidence to suggest that the common cold virus can increase the number of glucose receptors on your fat cells, according to the Obtech Obesity Research Center. This causes them to grow bigger in size and number, meaning you put on weight.

 

Eat in a warm room

Research from Maastricht University in the Netherlands showed that eating in warmer temperatures is better at leveling your cravings. Women who ate in a nice warm room kept at 27 degrees celcius rated themselves as 20% less hungry, and ate 10% less, than women who ate in a room at a cooler 22 degrees C.

 

 Surround yourself with healthy friends and family

A New England Journal of Medicine study found that you’re 57 percent more likely to be obese if you have a friend who’s fat, and 37 percent more likely if your spouse is on the cuddly side. A 2010 study in the journal Obesity found that people are less likely to consider themselves overweight when surrounded by other people who are bigger.

 

If you’d rather “eat a potato than have sex” get plenty of sunshine

If you’re one of the people who feel blue when winter turns on it’s shortest greyest days, it’s likely you’re unconsciously turning to carbs to deliver a quick hit of serotonin (the feel good chemical produced naturally in your body).

During winter, “there are people who go into a hibernating depression. They say they’d rather eat a potato than have sex” says Dr Douglas Moul from the Cleveland Sleep Disorders Clinic

This condition, know as  Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a recognised clinical condition which affects people mostly in the winter months. Research shows that it can trigger cravings for carbohydrates, and that people with SAD can eat an additional 800 calories a day from carbs alone. It seems people are most affected by the lack of sunlight, so one of the recommendations for people with SAD, is to get out and about in the day time and see as much sunlight as possible.

 

Keep an eye on your portion sizes

Trick yourself by using smaller bowls and plates. Use the visual cue of a smaller bowl or plate, to help you limit your portion size. Research using a self -refilling soup bowl showed that you’ll eat more if you are presented with more food. It’s easier to feel satisfied with smaller portions if your food is served on a smaller plate.

 

Snack Smart

Rather than an oversized blueberry muffin, choose two thin slices of raisin toast buttered sparingly to go with your coffee, and save yourself a couple of hundred calories.  And on the subject of coffee, instead of a latte or a flat white, try ordering a long black with some hot milk on the side. You’ll be able to control the amount of milk you’re drinking, and can save yourself another 200 odd calories on a 300 ml cup. And you’re far less likely to have a coffee that is on the ordinary side. Even an inexperienced barista can’t go too far wrong with a long black.

 

Keep up the Exercise. Have a plan B

If you know you just can’t get up early in winter to exercise, then try getting out at lunch time for a run, or running straight after you finish work, before you make the journey home. Have an indoor workout planned. You can put together a simple body weight circuit you can do in the comfort of your own lounge room. Another great indoor winter workout is swimming. The thought of it isn’t all that tempting, but even though it’s wet, it’s warm. Plan a swim session once a week, and see the benefits. It’s a great recovery session!

 

Choose comfort foods wisely

Porridge is a great winter warmer, but not so great if you add cream and sugar or honey. Make your porridge on water, and cook some banana with it for sweetness. If you’re making casseroles using the slow cooker, make sure you trim all visible fat from your meat before you pop it in. Unlike grilling or bar-b-queing, all the fat on the meat in a casserole will go straight onto your wobbly bits – the fat will simply cook off the meat and blend with the gravy (which is oh so yummy!)

 

Keep a food and exercise diary

Become more mindful of your activity levels and what you’re eating. I’ve found a great way to be sure of hitting my health goals is to keep a sticker chart. I have it plastered on the fridge where everyone can see it, and my kids will be the first to point out to me where I’m failing.

You can see my health and fitness tracker here

 

 

 

 

Look after you running shoes and keep them stink free!

 

Should you put your running shoes in the washing machine? How to do stop them from smelling? Take a look at this short video to get the low down on clean running shoes.

Transcript
Just in from a morning of training which means a morning of running around on wet grass with clients, hence my shoes need a bit of attention. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to show you guys how I look after my running shoes. It’s very simple.  It’ll stop your running shoes form being stinky, and help dry them out and keep them nice and light.

So if you’re just wanting to dry your shoes out when you come home, take the inner soles out of your shoes, get some rolled up newspaper and just stuff the newspaper right in. Notice I’ve also loosened my shoe laces quite a lot. You can take your shoe laces right out if your shoes are really wet, and it just enables you to get the newspaper right in there. This newspaper will absorb all the moisture. You might need to change the newspaper a couple of times if your shoes are really wet.  And then I leave them out in the sun.

With my inner soles to stop them being too smelly, I just give them a bit of a sprinkling with bi carb soda. (That’s a bit more than a sprinkling – a very liberal sprinkling of bicarb soda)-If your shoes are smelly they are probably the things that area doing the damage.

To clean your shoes, shoe manufacturers recommend a soft brush warm soapy water and then just scrubbing off any excess dirt. [A toothbrush or a washing up brush is great for this] I’m not too fussed about whether my shoes are dirty but I’m not too keen on them being smelly. People do suggest putting them in the washing machine. Shoe manufacturers suggest against doing that.

I did actually put a pair of my old shoes through the washing machine a couple of days ago. You can see this one here on your left is a little bit cleaner, but I certainly wouldn’t be doing that with my better shoes, just because the more your shoes are submerged in water the heavier they will get. To put them in the washing machine put them on a low spin, low heat, short cycle and pop a couple of towels in with them just for padding. Make sure you take the shoe laces out. You can either replace them or pop them in a sock bag and wash them in the sock bag.

So a few things to remember. Just dry your shoes out even if you don’t dry them out with newspaper. Just make sure you open them up and air them out pretty much every time you use them and you should have stink-free lovely clean shoes.

No time to exercise? Why not organise a Running School Bus at your school?

It’s national Walk Safely to School Day today, so the kids and I decided to run to school, and we picked up a few of their friends along the way.

 

 

For a simple version of a Running School Bus, here’s what we did.

• Organised for the kids to take their homework to school yesterday – yes, the thought of getting to run to school actually encouraged them to have their homework finished by Thursday, a whole day early
• Organised a lunch order from the canteen-another good carrot
• This meant we didn’t have to carry much with us this morning
• Emailed parents of children in my kids’ classes yesterday, with where we were leaving from, the route we were taking, and approximately what time we’d be at certain land marks
• Set out a few simple safety rules for the kids to follow

It was that simple.

This morning we had pockets full of mandarins, handballs and lunch orders, and I had to carry some soccer boots unexpectedly. I wasn’t really expecting to pick up anyone along the way as my email went out so last minute, but we ended up having seven kids running to school. They all loved it. I loved it, and I got in an 9km run before work. (and before you gasp at how mean I was making the children run that far, it was only 4.5k for them – I had to run back as well. )

Starting a Running Bus at Your School

• My suggestion is to start off in a very informal manner, as I did today. You can always formalise it if interest grows
• Plan to have the bus one day a month to start with, then you can increase the frequency if there’s demand. You want to make running to school a cool and exciting thing to do. Not something your kids dread every Friday!
• Have a wet weather arrangement
• Organinse for your kids to have everything at school they will need on the day of the Running Bus. You want to carry as little as possible

Check list for things to leave at school the day before the Running Bus

• school bag
• hat
• lunch – order from the canteen
• recess and fruit break-pack an extra piece of fruit and/or muesli bar in their bag the day before the run, or stuff them in their pockets on the day.  Muesli bars are another exciting thing about running to school for my kids-they rarely darken my door!
• any homework that’s due
• any sports gear needed for that day. Carrying a smelly old pair of soccer boots whilst you’re running isn’t great!

Supervision

Ideally, you’ll have a bus driver and a “sweeper”. Someone at the front of the group and someone coming up behind the last kid. I managed on my own, but there were only seven sensible kids.

Set some simple rules for the kids to follow to keep them safe, and make sure the parents know it’s their responsibility to ensure the kids are aware of the rules. The rules I set out were:

• No roads to be crossed unless an adult is present. This means the faster kids either have to wait on the corner of any cross streets, or (my preference) they run back towards the group and loop around the last kid on the bus. That way you can keep track of them a bit better.
• No balls to be played with along the way – it’s too likely it will go on the road and they will chase after them.
• Leave room on the footpath for other people.
• Don’t exhaust the driver.

If the Running Bus becomes more formalised, and it’s promoted throughout the wider school community as a school activity, there will be lots of health and safety, duty of care and insurance issues to deal with, as well as working with children checks.

An official eight page Australian Government document  has been put together by TravelSmart Australia, and can be found here. It’s covers every thing you could possibly want to know about organising a School Walking Bus, and would you believe it, the term School Walking Bus is actually trademarked?

Whatever happened to the good old days when pretty much everyone walked to school, with a good dose of running thrown in, and no parental supervision. Your mum asked the neighbour if their kids walked to school, the neighbour said yes, and they organised a time for you all to leave together!

If your kids love running, or you think they could if they were just given some expert encouragement, we’d love you to book them in for a FREE TRIAL at one of our sessions in Forestville, Frenchs Forest, or Lindfield.