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Workout Hacks that will surely Burn the Most Calories!
Are you making the most of your workouts or just going through the motions? What if there were proven 'workout hacks' that could supercharge your calorie burn?
In this enlightening episode of "me&my health up", host Anthony Hartcher delves deep into the workout hacks designed to maximise calorie burn. Discover the science behind why certain routines leave you feeling drained, while others supercharge your energy.
Learn the difference between rapid weight loss and a more sustainable, gradual approach. Anthony sheds light on the importance of post-workout recovery, the role of lactic acid, and the benefits of a balanced exercise regimen.
If you've ever felt stuck in your fitness journey or wondered how to get the most out of every sweat session, this episode is a must-listen. Dive in and uncover the workout hacks that will transform your fitness game. Whether you're a weekend warrior or a seasoned athlete, these insights will ensure you're not just working hard but working smart.
About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher
me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my health up which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.
Don't miss out on these life-changing tips – tune in now!
Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more
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Welcome back to another insightful episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hatcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and Lifestyle Medicine Specialist. Today, I'm sharing some insight in terms of workout hacks that will surely burn the most amount of calories. And in those workout hacks, I'm not only sharing about what type of workout to do, but also what to eat before, during, and after the workout, and also how to optimise recovery. So it's essentially going to be helping you with performance and or weight loss. Okay, so again, there's two different things. And I'm going to explain depending on your goal is important as to what you want to be taking away from this episode. So if you're coming into this episode looking to reduce weight, well, it's gonna come with compromising performance, potentially, if you're just purely chasing that waist block skull, and you want that really quickly, right. However, if you're happy to have slower weight loss and have more higher performing workouts, then that is possible. So I'm going to share the food, the lifestyle, and also what optimises weight loss in terms of workout routines. So let's get started with how we metabolise food. So when we metabolise food, the whole essence of eating food is to give us energy, okay? If we cannot create energy, we can only transform our food energy into energy, that gives us motion. So how do we do that we eat food, and our body breaks it down, eventually, the food gets broken down into fatty acids, which goes through a process of beta oxidation, or they're broken down into glucose from carbohydrates, which then goes through a process of the Krebs cycle, essentially. So through and also glycolysis, which is the breakdown of glucose. So without getting too technical here, there's different ways in which we derive energy through food. But ultimately, it produces output for us with in combination of we you know, we need oxygen in that process, okay, so oxygen, plus the energy source will convert to carbon dioxide and water. Okay, so that's essentially how we metabolise and produce energy. So in terms of performance, if you're looking for a higher performing workout, then in order to achieve great performance, the fastest way in which we derive and get energy is through burning glucose, carbohydrates, okay? So if you're looking to really have a good workout, you want to make sure you have optimal glycogen stores. So your glycogen, which is stored glucose is optimal. And that's through having a you know, fairly carbohydrate rich meal the night before, if you're training out, you know, working out that next morning, or if you're competing the next morning, so that's where the carb loading comes from. Right. And that's all around performance. However, if you're not chasing performance, then you limit your carbohydrates to encourage the body to derive its energy from fat stores. Okay, so if the body has depleted glycogen stores, then it's going to look for alternative forms. And this is what we call metabolic flexibility. So intermittent fasting or time restricted feeding, which is the proper name, but people call it intermittent fasting. Intermittent Fasting is more than five and two, so or some sort of derivation of that where you're having just normal calorific days and then you know, randomly you're having some low calorific days, that's intermittent fasting, but the one that people do, which is that 16, and eight, so 16 hours fast and an eight hour eating window, that's time restricted feeding, okay? So regardless, if you're doing the intermittent fasting or time restricted feeding, what we are doing is depriving our body of calories. And a lot of people are very focused on reducing carbohydrates, because it's, there's a, I guess, a belief out there that carbohydrates make us fat, which that's a myth in itself. In actual fact, it's the total total calorie consumption that makes us fat. So if you're eating low carbs, and you're wanting to lose weight, yes, then you are encouraging the body to look for alternative sources of energy and it will start going to fat stores mobilise fat stores and break down fat. Now, in that process of wanting to lose weight, eating less carbohydrates and using your own fat stores, it's harder for the body to do it requires more oxygen for the body to do so fatty acids are much longer carbon chains and they require more oxygen to break down. So that requirement of oxygen then determines the intensity of the workout right. So if you're wanting to do a high intensity workout on fat burning or Using fat stores, then it's going to be harder, your outputs not going to be great. And you're going to feel it more, okay. Whereas if you have a body that's got full glycogen stores, lots of store glucose, and it's readily available, and the body can break it down easy with less oxygen, then you'll find that you perform better. And you feel feel that that was a good workout. Whereas you're in the fat burning phase, you're going to think, Oh, that was a tough workout, right? With the fat burning, we can do it for longer, right? So it's more the endurance, fat burning gives us the endurance, whereas the high performance comes from burning glucose. So that's really important to know. Because, you know, some people want both, and you sort of got to choose your goal. If your goal is weight loss, and you wanting to burn fat and courage fat burning, then eat less work out but expect a lower performing workout, okay, then expect a high performing workout running on a fuel that's harder to burn, you need more oxygen. And so it's really hard to do high intensity exercise. With fat burning, it's much easier to do high intensity exercise burning carbohydrates. So if you're chasing a performance goal, then make sure your body or your diet has carbohydrates and that your glycogen stores are full. So hence, if we get down to what you should be eating before the workout, well, if you're looking to lose weight, then eating nothing is the preferential thing, okay? Because you want him to draw the energy from fat stores. And it's hard work. And this is the thing when we're encouraging fat burning, it is harder, the body wants to keep the fat, it wants to burn the easy stuff, which is the glucose that requires less oxygen. Okay, so if you're wanting performance, then yes, having some some carbohydrates certainly some glucose before the workout is ideal. So what's glucose you're you're looking for easily accessible glucose or pure glucose in the form of higher glycemic index foods, which is the foods that we're told not to eat or eat less of. But if you're a high performing athlete, then high glycemic index foods are actually supportive because they give you better training performance. And it will help you increase your VO two max which obviously helps you compete so yeah, so ideally, if you're looking for performance, a glucose before the workout, and you want to minimise like fiber intake, so you know, eating an apple, it's harder to extract the energy from the Apple because it's it's got all the it's all bound up in the fiber, right or eating something that's if you eating fat before your workout, then that's going to be hard for the body to extract and it's actually going to slow your ability to do the workout because you're going to be so busy burning the fat or trying to break down the fat digest the fat. So ideally, it is best to have sugar. So some small you know, whether it be a lolly like snakes or anything high glycemic honey or something that's very, very high glycemic with low fiber, it could be white bread with honey, honey, honey and white bread or it could be banana, bananas, a fairly high calorific, but then again, it's got fructose, fructose is harder to access for the body, it needs to be broken down by the liver. So you want something that's going to be absorbed straight into the bloodstream. That's glucose, okay, and then your cells can easily get it from the bloodstream. So yeah, so you need to work out whether you're wanting to perform well in that class or that training session, and therefore, yes, have some either have a big carbohydrate meal the night before, and then all that glucose will be stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver, and then you'll have access to that in the workout if you want. You could have like a squeezy hour before the workout too, because that's basically gonna go straight into your blood and that glucose and then your body will be able to access the glucose and convert it to energy. Just wanted to share it as to what you want to be eating before the workout during the workout. Well, it depends on the time duration of the workout, right? So if you're looking to burn fat, you're eating nothing during the workout. Okay, you're just you're accessing fat stores and breaking down fats and yes, it's getting to be hard work. So except that that's part of the journey. Okay, so yes, you've had the pleasure of eating all the food and putting the weight on Well, now you comes with the pain of trying to get it off. Okay, so pleasure and pain they come together. So with the during the workout for those that are wanting to do a high performing workout, if you've had optimal you know, you've stored your glycogen or students stored your glucose as glycogen, you know how big that carbohydrate meal the night before then that's going to last anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes for a workout. But depending on the intensity, if it's a high intensity workout, they're more than sort of 45 minutes and if it's a sort of moderate intensity, you'll probably get probably an hour if it's low intensity, you know that that glycogen stores before they've depleted will get you through at least 90 minutes. So and then after that period of time, then Your body's going to rely primarily on fat stores. Okay, because the glycogen is all used up, then it's going to look for muscle and glycogen, glycogen, fat stores burn fat and burn muscle or protein. Yeah. So that's how long you're going to get during your workout depending on your how intense the session is. Now, what's high intensity high intensity is where your heart rate as a percentage of heart rate max, and I'll.
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Anthony Hartcher:to talk you through the equation. So heart soon. rate Max is 220 minus your age, that's your maximum heart rate, okay, and then the percentage range that you want to be in is somewhere between 75 and 95. For high intensity athletes will be pushing well above that, okay, but they have a heart rate, a higher heart rate reserve. And so this is how you truly calculate your intensity workout or the zone in which you want to have your objective measure, which is you're measuring your heart rate. So if you've got a way to measure your heart rate, in terms of the zone, you want to keep that in, this is how you calculate it. So I've just walked you through how to calculate heart rate Max, which is 2 20 minus your age, and then you want to calculate your heart rate reserve, which is the max minus, so your maximum minus your resting heart rate, so your resting heart rates at rest. So ideally, when you're getting up in the morning, that's your heart rate when you're lying in bed, okay, or when you've been at risk for for a period of time, then you calculate your resting heart rate. So athletes have much lower resting heart rate. So their heart rate reserve is has is much larger, those that aren't the the true athlete or the more the weekend warrior, you have a lower heart rate reserve. So then you take the percentage, so if I want to work out at 85% Max, then I'm taking 85% of that heart rate, reserve figure, okay, and then you add back on your resting heart rate, okay, so you can go to this and websites that enable us calculate your training interval zone, if you want a less accurate sort of calculation, then you can just take the percentage of your maximum heart rate, it's not ideal, but it's good enough, right. So you can just take 85% of the maximum heart rate, which is 220 minus your age, then you want to keep your intensity somewhere between 75 and 85% of your maximum heart rate if you're using the more simpler equation, but the ideal equation is obviously calculating your heart rate reserve, and then adding back on you're taking a percentage of that and then adding back on your resting heart rate. Okay, so that's going to give the Insight if you're doing high intensities, anywhere between 75 to 85% intensity, and that's where you're primarily your body's going to primarily want a glucose burning, right, it wants to go through a period of burning glucose, because that's going to give you that sort of output be able to work in that range of maximum heart rate, it's going to be harder to work in that high intensity interval for a long period of time when you're trying relying on fat reserves, aka so that's probably it's much easier to burn fat in the lower intensity areas, because the lower intensity workouts, we're getting in more oxygen, okay, and there's less demand from the body in terms of using that oxygen to create energy. So we have this surplus oxygen, or the oxygen saturation to actually burn fat or primarily burn fat when we're doing lower intensity workout. So when you're doing low to moderate, so loads anywhere between 50 and sort of 65% of that calculation, and I've shared or moderate is between 64 and 75%, to be precise, but the best way to gauge it is low intensity means that essentially not out of breath, you can just keep walking and you're talking freely and you don't really feel like you're trying to catch your breath. Okay? Moderate intensity is that you can still talk but it's a bit harder, okay? It's not as free flowing as when you're just cruising and another indicator of moderate intensity is it will take about 10 minutes to break into a light sweat hand. The other thing is that you can talk but you can't sing In moderate intensity in high intensity, within a few minutes, you'll break into a sweat. And you can only say a few words, you can't actually hold a conversation, okay, you can just squeeze in a few words, push it a bit harder, that's it, or something like that. But you won't be able to say much more than that. So sentences are harder to say when you're doing a high intensity workout, and you'll break into a sweat much quicker. So so that's the sort of low moderate to high in to burn fat, you're going to be needing to primarily, if you want to primarily burn fat, then low to moderate intensity workouts is more in the fat burning zone. So what are those types of exercise, those types of exercise are yoga, walking, again, not fast walking, but sort of just moderate walking, they may be at that sort of 15 minute kilometer pace that faster paces 10 minute kilometers, so maybe somewhere between 10 and 15 Is that more moderate, that fast paced fork is around that 10 kilometers per hour. And then so that's yoga, again, Pilates is more lower intensity, and then you've got your more higher intensity exercises like hit training, boxing, running, swimming, but swimming, you know, laps at fairly high tempo, you know, slow swimming is more than moderate intensity. But yeah, so anyway, anytime when you gasping for air is essentially that your body's needing more oxygen, haha, because I can't keep up with your output. And so when you're gasping for it, you're in that high intensity training zone. And in that high intensity, your body is looking to burn glucose, because it is it requires less oxygen to burn, it will be burning some fat, but a less a lower, much lower percentage of fat. Now, in order to have the endurance obviously, the intensity has to come down and in order to you know, support fat burning, and with fat burning, you can go for longer, longer, but slower. So, but with the glucose burning or carbohydrate burning, you can go harder that for less time. Okay, so as I said, your glycogen stores will survive anywhere up to 90 minutes between 45 and 90 minutes. So you don't need to eat anything. But if you need, if you want to keep burning glucose beyond that 45 to 90 minutes that glycogen window, then you need to bring glucose into your body, you need to have a squeezy, one of those gels, which is just glucose, right? So you need to be consuming them in order to keep burning glucose to keep that high performance app such as those that are doing like marathons and stuff like that, that are chasing time goals that are wanting to be at a certain time, then they're going to be having glucose squeezes or they're going to be having electrolyte drinks with glucose in them, such as Gatorade, or Powerade, or something like that. So you need to consume it throughout the activity if it's going longer than 45 to 90 minutes. And that's depending on the how intense or how hard you're going. And then so ideally, you want to be consuming the glucose before you hit that window. Because so the body has time to take it into the cells. Okay, yes, the body needs some time to do what it needs to do right in these to transport and stuff and open up cell windows and allow the glucose into the cell. So in order to keep that high performing up and burning glucose you need to keep you need to start consuming glucose during that workout. If you want to keep burning fat, then yes, it's going to be harder to maintain that higher intensity. So the intensity will drop off, your performance will drop off, but you'll be able to go for longer and you'll be burning more fat, it will feel harder, okay. It's it's what the athletes call hitting the wall, right? They they switch the metabolic flexibility switches from burning glucose to burning fats and they hit the wall, their performance drops, okay, the performance drops right down. They can keep going but they've hit the wall their bodies now burning fat stores. And so they haven't fueled they haven't filled in time. They haven't got to their fuel stock in time, or they've misjudged their fuel intake based on their output. So yeah, so depending on your goal is whether you're going to need fuel during the workout. And then in terms of post workout, well, if your goal is to lose weight, then don't eat after the workout and you'll keep burning fat. Okay, your body's in fat burning mode, but don't expect high output. Don't expect to feel great, okay? Because you're burning fat. It's hard hard work, okay, your body will get better at burning fat, the more its reliance on fat to burn it gets good at burning fat, but that takes time that takes an adjustment and adaptation and adaptation takes time. So if you're keep working at this, you'll find it's easy to burn fat, but initially it's hard. It's hitting the wall. Okay, so post workout. If you don't consume any food post workout, yes, you'll hit the wall and your energy will go down. But if you persist, you'll keep burning fat and you'll start to get better at burning fat and you will pick up a bit but not as optimally as what you will If you're got some carbohydrates in the body, again, if you're wanting performance, then after the workout, you want to consume carbohydrates straight away to replace the used up glucose that was in store as glycogen, okay, so you want to replenish your glycogen stores by consuming carbohydrates post workout, and then that will fuel you for your next workout because a lot of these athletes do a morning workout afternoon workout. So that need to replace that glycogen that's been used up, fill it back up again. So it depends on your goal. And it depends on the performance output. So in summary, and you know, summarising this up well, if you're wanting performance, then consume carbohydrates, you can consume them the night before or pre workout or during the day, you want to be consuming carbohydrates before you work out in the afternoon, that will give you performance and you'll feel great, and it will feel a lot easier versus the contrary, if you're wanting to burn fat, then eating less before workout, then you're going to be reliant, your body's going to be reliant on grabbing it from fat stores. However, in that process of mobilising the breaking down, extracting the fat from the fat cell, and then utilising that in our cells for energy output that takes time and your body if it's not used to burning fat, because, you know, prior, you used to eat a lot of carbohydrates or consume a lot of energy. And the body was had free free access to energy. It's not used to burning fat. And so it doesn't feel great to burn fat. So just acknowledge that there's going to be an adaptation period where you're going to get used to burning fat. So initially, it's tough, but it gets easier over time. So if you're wanting to lose weight, then stick with it. And yes, post workout, you're going to feel hungry, your body's going to say, look, I've just burnt a whole lot of fuel, I want you to replace it to keep me safe to keep me secure, just in case I need to quickly get away from a threat. And so it wants you to replace the fuel that's been lost and expended. So yes, you're gonna get hunger signals postworkout. And you're going to feel more hungrier, the more you work out, because you consuming energy. But if you want to burn fat, best to put up with the hunger signals, and endure it and drink water. Okay, so yes, you're going to be running a bit low and a bit flat. And this will get easier over time. But the longer you can sit with it and endure it, the more fat you're going to burn. And it depends on how quickly you want to achieve that weight loss goal. So if you're impatient, you want to get it quickly, then you're going to have to sit with these hunger periods for longer, you're gonna have to work out and bit of a struggle during workouts, but it's the pain for eating too much, you know, you're wearing the consequence from eating too much, because it's difficult to lose it, it's easy to put it on because it's pleasurable, right, but trying to get it off is quite painful. And so be willing to endure the pain in order to get back to where you want to. So what my daughter says suck up the hunger signals. Just suck it up. Breathe through it, I find if you distract yourself and do something that's important to you a an action that you really enjoy doing, such as I love doing these podcasts, I'm not even thinking about food when I'm doing these podcasts, then you can delay having food and then forget about it. And then that hunger signal won't come back until you're bored again, okay. So if you stay on priority, and doing things that are important to you, then that hunger signals will be delayed, it's going to be pushed back and pushed back. But then again, it can hit you in the evening. And then you might succumb to it and just give in. Okay, so it really, I think ideally, it's a lot easier to lose weight when you're, you've got a longer timeframe. So having some more patience and seeing it as a long term goal is so much easier, because you can enjoy your workouts and still be burning fat, but you're just slowly burning over time, you can have a bit of food post workout, so you don't you're not optimising fat burn, but you're feeling better, because you've got more energy and you're feeling a bit up as opposed to just feeling quite sluggish because you haven't eaten anything. And your body's just enduring, trying to burn grind that fat out and burn that fat. So I recommend you actually push out the time duration of your goal. Find the routine that works for you in terms of you enjoying your workouts, you still got energy post workout, because you're not starving yourself for a long duration and just accepting that it's getting to be a longer journey, but a more satisfying journey. So if you want a quick fix, then you got to put up with a lot of pain. If you happy to play the long game, then you don't have to endure as much pain and you play the long game but it will happen over time you'll just slow it you'll lose the weight slower and in actual fact that a more sustainable weight loss who's between point five and a kilo per week as opposed to losing six kilos a week losing six kilos a week is a lot of pain, okay, if you want to just do it over a longer period of time. It's much easier and it's much more sustainable because what will happen if you push yourself to achieve that weight loss, and then you think, Well, I've lost all the weight, I'm going to reward myself and then that reward is tend to be you tend to overdo the reward, okay? Because you've been starving yourself, you've been slogging it out. So you tend to overcompensate the reward, and then you actually put the weight back on. But if you're taking much endure like a longer term approach and more like a journey as opposed to a destination, then you enjoy the journey and it's satisfying and you can keep it up and you can keep doing it as opposed to that quick fix is unsustainable, you can't do it and you'll probably end up going back to what you're doing previously and gain all the weight back on and some more Okay, so I'd much prefer you set realistic sustainable goals and see it over a longer duration and enjoy the journey. So I hope this is really helpful in terms of the weight you know, the, I guess the workout hacks in order to optimise weight loss and you know what to eat before during and post workout in addition to post workout recovery is important. So making sure you're you're getting the blood ox, you're helping balancing the pH because when we do workouts, we do a bit of anaerobic burning, so we're burning fuel without oxygen that creates acid lactic acid, okay, and that lactic acid can create that acidosis within us creates a pH imbalance. So it's important to do some breathing exercises afterwards, get your breath back into order, so it's not panting and restore audit to your breath, do some long exhales exhaling the carbon the carbon dioxide reduces the blood alkalinity reduces the lactic acid buildup, so long exhales reduces the blood acid and increases the alkalinity. And so eventually, you'll get back to more rhythmic breathing, which is the same inhale and exhale. The other thing is making sure you're having a bit of protein post workout, some carbohydrates, and again, lots of fruit and vegetables to help with the restoration and making sure you get all the micro nourishment to support the macro nourishment. So I just want to leave it there today. And sleep obviously is really important. I've spoken a lot about sleep in previous episodes, so I won't go on about the sleep but making sure you have a good recovery and that you have a good balance rhythm of exercise. So if you're doing a high intensity workout one day and you're feeling a bit sluggish the next day, they're not to flog yourself, do a lighter session the next day. So finding a nice rhythm during your week. So you could optimise your energy so you feel good, okay, as opposed to constantly feeling flat. And that's because you keep doing too much high intensity exercise and your shake chasing that short term goal. Go for the long term approach more sustainable approach and you'll be able to endure it with more satisfaction and ultimately, you'll get your goal so that's really it for this week's episode of me&my health up appreciate your ears. Please share it with others that want a more balanced insight around exercise and nourishment and until next time, enjoy your journey your healthy journey and take care bye for now.
Podcast Disclaimer:This podcast and any information advice opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast. Connected Wellness provides you unlimited operating under the branch me&my health up does not make any representations or give any warranties about his accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information, advice or opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, psychiatric or any other mental health care or health care in general. me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information. changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information to the maximum extent permitted by the law. me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses losses damages incurred indirect or consequential damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way. And for any reason. No part of this podcast can be reproduced or redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in a form without prior permission of me&my health up.