Author: Robert Manning (Page 9 of 9)

Daily time table

Sitting down to commute to work, sitting down in the office for work, sitting down for lunch, sitting down to commute home, sitting down for tea, and lastly sitting down to watch some tv. That’s an awful lot of sitting down. For many people however, that is their daily routine.

What does all this sitting do to you?

You may think, ‘but I go to the gym in the evening’, or ‘I go for a run before work’. Don’t get me wrong that’s good, however research is now suggesting that time spent sedentary, displaces the time spent when undertaking physical exercise. 

Research has also been suggesting for a while, that the more time spent sitting by an individual can influence chronic issues such as type 2 diabetes, breast and colon cancer as well as cardiovascular disease. 

The most important part of this study, was that if an individual sat either working or watching tv for four hours, compared to someone who sat for two hours, there was an 80% increased risk in cardiovascular disease mortality. This increase was independent of risk factors such as smoking, diet, waist line as well as the amount of physical activity the participants undertook.

What can you do?

There are many little things which you can do to stop yourself from sitting down for long periods of time.

1. Standing on the bus rather than sitting
2. Take the stairs every time
3. Park further away from work
4. Don’t eat your lunch at your desk
5. Regular breaks from your computer
6. Look into getting a standing up desk
7. Don’t use your tv remote at home
8. Stand up when using the phone

These are just a few ideas to help get you more active when previously you would sit down

Journal: Too Much Sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behaviour

Fact Sheet

The effects of chronic sleep loss are:
• Delayed reactions
• Easily distracted
• Forgetting known facts
• Difficulty remembering
• Making mistakes and omissions

Sleep loss leads you to be more stressed and irritable. It also leads to a drop in motivation.

The minimum amount of tolerated sleep is six hours. If this is maintained over several weeks your effectiveness slowly decreases. If you wanted to get your body used to just six hours sleep, it would take several weeks for your performance to not be effected. Just remember, even though your performance will not be affected, you will still continue to be drowsy. On the other hand don’t go and increase your sleep by 2-3 hours, as this also decreases performance.
In a sample of 1 million people conducted over six years, the lowest mortality rate was found in people who had on average 6.5 to 7.5 hours sleep a night. Too short or long a sleep has been found to correlate with an increase in diabetes and blood pressure.

A very important thing to note, is that just one night of sleeplessness can cause a 23% increase in mistakes, and a 14% increase in time taken when undertaking menial tasks.

Parents

In teenagers 8-15 who lacked sleep, it has been found they gain more weight than 3-8 year olds who also lacked sleep. The proposed reason for this, is that teenagers go to bed later and wake up later, whereas children go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.

If you are trying to lose weight

Lack of sleep gives adults a 35% risk of gaining five kg and a 27% chance of becoming obese. Having too much sleep also gives adults a 25% risk of gaining five kg and a 21% increased chance of becoming obese.

In healthy humans sleep loss hinders normal functions. The effects maybe different with people who have sleep disorders. Depressive disorders can cause difficulty with sleep. If these problems are eliminated, depression reduces in 40-60% of cases.

For anyone who wants further reading the journal article was called CONSEQUENCES OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION by JOLANTA ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA

Yes it’s that time of year again. Christmas has been and gone, and now the New Year is here when people make their resolutions. Some people’s maybe to race the London Marathon, or others may want to get the beach body they have always talked about. When you see your friends in the pub telling you this, probably even last night, how many people do you think will actually get that body or run that race? Research actually suggests that only around 8% of people complete their new year’s resolutions. Is there a reason for this?

Goals for New Years like the two above tend to be very vague. ‘I will race the London Marathon’ sounds like a pretty good goal doesn’t it? They apply, get accepted, but with no immediate goals to aim for it become very easy to drop behind on the preparation and training. They end up completing the race, but find it extremely difficult and quite possibly pick up an injury.

Could they have done better? Of course! If only they had made their goal more specific. A much better goal would have been to say ‘I want to enter the London Marathon, I am going to train for at least 2 times a week to begin with and I want to beat 5 hours.’ This resolution is much more specific and gives yourself a more tangible goal.

SMART goal setting is one of the most widely used methods:

S- SPECIFIC

M- MEASURABLE

A-  ATTAINABLE

R- RELEVANT(RESULTS)

T- TIME ORIENTATED

The ‘beach body for summer’ resolution is the same. It doesn’t give you a time to aim for, just ‘summer’, be SPECIFIC.  ‘By June 12^th I want to be size 10’ or ‘I want to have a body fat of 8%’, I will do this by going to the gym twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This makes each week a goal, and makes you more likely to keep it in the long term. Another way of keeping to your goals is by making it public and telling your friends and family, even keeping a blog on it or updating it daily on facebook.

A few other tips for goal setting

 1. Plan in advance

Try and make some sort of timetable of your week to then fit your goal in.

  2. Don’t put things off

When you start thinking ‘i can skip today, it won’t matter’. DON’T. A 6 month goal is completed by REPEATING the daily basics

   3. Make it enjoyable

If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it. There is more than one way of doing something. E.g. if you don’t like running on your own, find a running club.

4. Don’t expect instant results   

 5. Baby Steps

There is nothing wrong with hoping to do an Ironman, when the only distance you have ran before is 5km. You should set your sight on first completing a half marathon. Keep the really big goals in the back of your head, as one day they will be closer than you think.

Lastly the most important part of your goal/s is that you enjoy getting to the end product. I was directed to a video to do with goal setting, where it talks about how quickly the feeling of euphoria goes after completing a goal.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3bBk6oneqc&feature=youtu.be

The cliff for the video boils down to:

MAKE SURE ENJOY THE DAILY GRIND, COMPLETING THE END GOAL IS A BONUS

Hope you all have had a good Christmas and a Great New Year!!