The Deadly Poison in your Food Cupboard

A Deadly Poison

There is a deadly poison in your food cupboard – and it kills more than 10% of us in the UK and costs the taxpayer more than £23 Billion every year – and it gets worse every year.

It’s not fatty food, it’s not artificial colouring or E numbers and it’s not alcohol.

It’s sugar. This is not a sensational claim. It’s a shocking fact, and the effect on your health is staggering.

The Paradox

Your body runs on sugar. It’s the fuel you use to function. So how can it be poisonous? The answer lies in type and quantity. Sugar is killing us because we consume too much of it in foods that release sugar too quickly.

Never before in the history of the human race has sugar been so readily available. Your body evolved to crave sugar in a world where sugar was scarce. We now live in a world where sugar is everywhere in huge quantities and much of it is hidden.

Sugar and Sugar

Although your body uses sugar as a fuel, sugar, as we know it now did not exist. So your body evolved to create sugar from other more complex molecules contained in plants – carbohydrates. When you eat an apple, your body breaks down the complex molecules that make an apple to make sugar to use as fuel. But that takes time and energy, so the sugar from that apple is released only slowly into your bloodstream. Your blood delivers the sugar (in small amounts) around your body to fuel your cells.

But in the modern world, sugar molecules do not need to be made inside our bodies. Sugar molecules already exist in vast quantities in the majority of modern food. So vast amounts are released into your bloodstream when you eat a great many modern foods. A high level of sugar in your bloodstream is poisonous and unless it’s removed quickly, you’ll fall into a coma and die.

Your body secretes insulin to stop this happening. Insulin mops up the excess sugar and stores it for later use (it’s a precious fuel, remember, so it doesn’t want to waste it). Excess sugar gets stored in your fat cells.

And it is excess sugar stored in fat cells that has caused the obesity epidemic in the developed world.

The Risk

Excess sugar in your bloodstream is dangerous for other reasons too. Consistently eating high sugar foods can eventually lead to insulin resistance whereby your body can no longer regulate blood sugar levels correctly. This is Type 2 Diabetes and it cost the NHS 10% of the entire Health Service Budget every year.

Excess sugar gets stored in fat cells and excess body fat is deadly too. Coronary Heart Disease, Cancer, Stroke, Dementia, Joint Problems, Depression – list is huge and people are dying needlessly. And all because of too much readily available sugar.

Hidden in plain sight

Modern food contains huge amounts of free sugar (the type that rapidly raises blood sugar levels) and much of it is hidden.A cup of fruit juice smoothie from Costa contains 24 teaspoons of sugar! Think about that – 24! From a drink marketed as healthy!Breakfast cereal bars and snack often contain as much sugar as a Mars or Snickers bar!A single can of Coke contains 9 teaspoons of sugar! 

Sleep – the key to your Fat-loss…

Sleep could literally be the secret ingredient to your fitness/weight-loss success. Except it’s not a secret, we just don’t realise how important it is. The truth is that more or better quality sleep can lead to:

One – Weight and fat loss

Two – Increased muscle gains

Three – More energy and focus

 Four – Better exercise sessions

 Five – Faster recovery

 Six – Better hormone function

 But why? Two people can exercise as hard as each-other, diet as well as each-other and see very different results, all because of how many zzz’s they’re catching. A study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine compared dieters who were given different sleeping schedules. With the only difference being how much sleep they had, The well rested group lost more weight, more fat, had more energy and found it easier to diet. The group that cut back on sleep lost weight, but a lot of it was muscle and they reported having “no energy to exercise” and said they felt much hungrier.

When we don’t get enough sleep our bodies don’t function as well and one of the biggest effects is on our hormones. After just 4 days of sleep deprivation your bodies ability to make insulin becomes severely disrupted and you also become much less insulin sensitive. This is disastrous when we’re trying to lose weight/fat as Insulin plays a crucial role in burning fat and the more insulin sensitive we are, the better it is at doing this. 

Two other very important hormones are also affected when we’re not sleeping enough. They are Leptin and Ghrelin. These hormones are what control how hungry we feel and how are bodies spend energy. Controlling these hormones is key to fat loss. The less we sleep the more we effect Leptin and Ghrelin in the wrong way, so we feel hungrier and less satisfied by foods meaning we crave and eat more.

Not getting enough sleep can also start to affect our ability to recover. When we exercise we push our bodies, often creating micro-tears in our muscles and forcing our bodies to adapt/change. This change happens whilst we rest and sleeping is by far the most important element of resting. Scientists in Brazil have proven that a sleep deficit decreases protein synthesis (which is the making/repairing of muscle) and can cause muscle loss and lead to higher rates of injury. It also slows down the production of Growth Hormone, which we really don’t want to happen as Growth Hormone is fat burning and anti-aging! 

So, how much sleep should we be getting? A study performed in the Czech Republic found that test subjects who maintained 7 hours of sleep each night were much closer to their “optimal body weight”. The more frequent and intense your exercise sessions, the more sleep can become necessary (Usain Bolt sleeps for an average of 9-10 hours a night and when Andy Murray is in deep training/competition he sleeps as much as 13 hours!). The average person should aim for around 8 hours a night and then adjust based on how you feel, how you perform and how easy you find it to lose fat/build muscle.

Sweet Dreams!

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Coffee and Fat-Loss

Coffee. The staple drink of many busy and/or tired people. We know it can help us wake up in the morning or to keep us awake when we are tired but coffee is also a very useful tool when it comes to Fat-loss.

Coffee can increase our Metabolism. Scientific studies have shown an increase of as much as 3-11% from an average strength cup. 

It can also improve our Physical performance by stimulating our nervous system, making you more focused and ready to exercise and by using more energy from your fat tissues (happy days). Studies have shown Coffee can improve athletic performance by an average of 10%

Coffee also has a fairly powerful ability to suppress appetite. This is so helpful when you are in a calorie deficit trying to lose body fat as we know that at certain times of the day we get hungry and we don’t have enough calories in our daily allowance to snack. This happens to me all the time and I find that around 500ml of cold water and a strong black coffee soon have me forgetting I was ever hungry in the first place.

As well as being great for your waist line Coffee has been involved in thousands of Scientific studies where strong evidence links it to lowering risk of Type 2 Diabetes, helping to lower risk of Parkinsons and Alzheimers, helping fight Liver cirrhosis and it’s packed with nutrients and antioxidants. 

Before you start downing pints of Espressos there are some things to think about when it comes to Coffee. First is that too much of anything is never good. Second is that people can become tolerant to some of Coffees effects over time which means having breaks from coffee keeps it as effective as possible. I often drink coffee before working out during the week and then wont drink any at all from Friday to Monday.

The last thing to consider is the type of coffee you drink. Lots of coffee chains offer drinks that are packed with Calories which isn’t what we want and negates all of those positive fat-loss effects. Black coffee is my go to and adding a little cinnamon can make it more tasty and even better for you. A little bit of milk isn’t the end of the world but f you’re having 2 or 3 coffees a day those calories cans add up.

When you drink your coffee is really up to you, but I like to have a strong black coffee between 5-15 minutes before I train to help me work harder or get through tough sessions. As always do what works for you.

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Why is 1000 Calorie BootCamp so good at burning fat?

Our Workouts combine total body resistance exercise with high intensity cardio to make sure you get the most out of every session. We work hard to keep them fun, challenging and effective! So without further ado, here are 5 of the reasons why it works so well:

Reason 1. Resistance exercise makes muscles tighter and more toned. It also continues to burn calories after you finish as your body tries to recover making it one of the best ways to burn fat, and at BootCamp we do A LOT of it 

Reason 2. Working out in groups is proven to motivate people to train harder and more often than if they workout alone and here at BootCamp we do everything together!

Reason 3. HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training is incredibly effective at burning fat during a workout and for hours afterwards because it’s so intense. HIIT also speeds up your metabolism for an average of 8 hours after you finish, making you a fat burning machine! At BootCamp we include HIIT in every session and at least once per week we do a WHOLE HIIT session.

Reason 4. Information… whether its training tips, recipes or advice about healthy eating we’ve got you covered! Our Blog and our Facebook are full of articles on fat loss, calories, free workout videos and more. If you ever have a question you can ask us on Facebook or better yet at a workout and we’re happy to help 

Reason 5. It’s FUN! A great atmosphere, awesome people, great Trainers (ahem, modesty) and workouts that challenge and motivate you. It’s a social way to keep fit, burn fat and enjoy it as you go!

So there you have it – 5 of the best, best reasons 1000 Calorie BootCamp is so good at burning fat.

1000 Calorie BootCamp – Fitness and Fatloss made simple

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