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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I'm now back in London. I've been in Brazil for four months. No, I wasn't in Brazil for four months on a holiday. I was there living, working, different routine, different environment, trying to make some moves in the Brazilian fitness market, but for sure different.
Speaker 1:When you're out of your home routine, completely different food options, different language, everything's harder in our sense, but luckily when using our Harapal I can just take a photo of a nutrition label and it works out whatever language is given. So in that sense it was easy to track packaged foods and also Brazilian food is amazing, it's mainly like meat and rice and beans and again that's easy to track especially because they give you the weight of the meat on the menu most of the time. So in that sense it was easy, but the food options definitely made it. My diet was very different because it's much cheaper out there, I was able to eat out more in a sense like I could just go out and have a steak and rice and beans most times or acai, milkshake the acai, Conway Protein, stuff like that. So yeah, for sure notice the environment changes your eating behaviour for sure because the options change everything, the lifestyle is different, the sun is always out.
Speaker 1:So yes, it was an experience and I think you know, sometimes with when we think about our our behavior, we think we're we're fighting against the same environment, and sometimes it's it's a change of environment that's needed, and that doesn't mean moving house or whatever. It just means, like, you know, food option food options as an as an environment, or, like, the certain gym you go to is a different environment. You know, the the way you you go to work is a different environment. You walk past a Greg's pasties every day or if you drive do you skip that? There's many things you need to think about where they prompt you.
Speaker 1:For example, when I'm back in Wales, near my house back in Wales, there's a roundabout. There's always the main McDonald's, there's so many memories in a McDonald's that every time I drive past it, oh, I'll just go drive through a McDonald's, might even see someone I know, you know, so my behaviour changes because I drive past it, but when I take the train I don't see it, so I don't have it. Just think about these things, it's quite interesting to think about and have a think and let me know if you find any interesting things you do in certain environments that you don't typically do when you're not there. But today I want to cover two studies, one of them is does resistance training which means training with weights, so your body weight, resistance bands, weights like free weights or machines reduce chronic inflammation. So there's a meta analysis of 19 randomized controlled trials in seven twenty two older adults.
Speaker 1:What that means is randomized controlled trials are one of the best trials, like the gold standard of trials. It's not like observational, it's not like oh people are doing this so we think it causes that, it's literally cause and effect. And they were looking at resistance training if it reduced C reactive proteins or CRP and if it improved physical function. So the key study details are the training program lasted six to thirty eight weeks with two to three weekly sessions, the exercises included squats, leg presses, bench press, rows performed at 30 to 85% of one repetition maximum, so one rep max. So what that means is if you could do a squat holding a dumbbell and you hold a dumbbell as 10 kilograms and you can do one rep only because it's heavy, that's your one rep max, so 50% of that would be five kilos.
Speaker 1:That makes sense? And they were doing one to five sets of four to 25 reps, so very range of different stuff and they did use elastic bands body weight free with some machines as well. So overall resistance training reduced CRP levels which is good with a moderate to large effect size and resistance training also improved walking speed and leg extension strength and reduced body fat percentage. So overall resistance training reduced CRP by lowering chronic low grade inflammation possibly through improved muscle function and reduction in body fat, especially visceral fat, so that's a key driver of inflammation. So when it comes to thinking, and I know a lot of people listening are maybe thinking about these health things and not just about looking good on the beach or whatever, whilst advocating simplicity, I've always said if there's something to add in, it's one to two strength based workouts or resistance training a week, one to two sets per exercise, making sure you do squats for legs, can do leg press, can do machines, can do whatever you feel comfortable with, pay a PT for a few sessions which is good so you can get that comfortability in, go to some group classes in your local village, find something that moves your body and uses some of your body weight or free weight, elastic bands and stuff, and just get one worker in a week from now, say for the next ten weeks you're going to do one a week and maybe you can build it a tube.
Speaker 1:And that's all you need to do to have benefits like this that you might not have without it and I'm not saying like worry and panic and stuff but little things go far when you do the right little things, does that make sense? But these little things are the big things. So we think they're little but they're not really. Know when you think of calories, protein and steps, you're like, oh they're just calories, protein and steps quite little but they are the big things. Same with you, what can I do training wise that's going to improve my health?
Speaker 1:And you start thinking, well, the bodybuilders have been telling us for years in the magazines we've got to train five, six times a week, one to two hours a day, we've got to do something like CrossFit or Hirocs, we've to do something really complicated, these are like overhead presses, no way I can do that stuff, there's no point in me even trying because those things are so difficult for me to do. But the actual fact is, for the general health benefits, you can just do the machines, you can do them at your own pace, you don't have to push yourself to crazy levels, you can be comfortable doing it, and you can leave the gym energised as opposed to feeling absolutely killed from the workout, and you're going to get the health benefits, your muscle function is going to improve, you're going to lose more fat if you're in a deficit and your protein is high, more fat will be lost as a part of your weight. So there's a lot of benefits of doing things like this, okay? Just want to bring this study up because I know we're doing this to improve our health, we're doing this to hopefully live longer but healthier lives, to be role models for people around us so we can do the things we love in our life.
Speaker 1:We can do those daily walks, the mata. You know, you can go on holiday and and and explore. You can walk up the steps. You can maybe, you know, do some activity that you maybe wouldn't do when you're not feeling great. You know?
Speaker 1:Get some confidence back. Wear the clothes you wanna wear. Be able to have that spring back in your step. These things make such a big difference to your behaviour day to day, they change your life. It doesn't matter if you've got abs or not, it doesn't matter if you still got fatter on the hips and stuff, most of us are always going to have things we're not happy with, that's part of the human condition unfortunately.
Speaker 1:We're not always going to be happy with how we look because we always think we see perfection online. But the downsides to seeing these people with abs online and all of these perfect bodies is a lot of them are coming out now saying they've got a really bad relationship with food, they've got eating disorders, they feel terrible about themselves, they're always seeking validation, never happy. So no matter where you are, how you look, if we're not looking after our mind and thinking about the deeper why, we're always going to fall into the trap of we're never good enough, we're going start doing things that are extreme to look more better to look better and better, to lose more weight, and it's going end up being detrimental especially to our mental health. Okay? So think about that.
Speaker 1:Think about why you're doing things. We want to do the base things for our health and we want to enjoy them, that's the main thing so we can keep doing them. The second study I want to mention, which is an interesting one, it compared a group of people doing ten weeks of training, ten week break and then ten weeks of training. So one group did ten weeks, break, ten weeks, and another group didn't do the first ten weeks but they did the second ten weeks and the third ten weeks. So there's three chunks of time.
Speaker 1:You've got ten, ten, ten, ten, in the second group there's three time periods but they only did the last two, so you're basically comparing training for ten weeks, taking ten weeks off, and then training for ten weeks, not doing the first ten weeks but training twenty weeks in a row instead of the break. Does that make sense? So they wanted to find out does doing ten weeks then ten weeks off, maybe life gets in the way and going ten weeks back, will result in the same results as if you did twenty weeks consistently. And in short, the results were the same. So the first group, they did ten weeks of training, when they did the 10 off, yes their performance and strength and some muscle size reduced, but when they did the ten weeks again they rebounded quicker because there is muscle memory, there is those kind of scaffolding that's still up to rebuild quicker, they managed to rebuild back and they managed to build up to a level the same as if you did twenty weeks in a row in general.
Speaker 1:So the good news from this is if you feel like you've done some training and you feel like you can't always do fifty two weeks a year of training, or you feel like it's impossible for you to be that consistent, just know that being able to do some chunks of time is very beneficial because when you've built that muscle and built that strength it's easier to reclaim it back when you get back into it. It's absolutely fine to be able to do, I've only got five weeks until my holiday, I've only got five weeks like until my new job starts, I've only got five weeks until x y z, it's not much time, it is a good amount of time to build something and if you need to take a few weeks, you can't do it and you get back into it, it's all good. For me for example, I haven't done much in the gym for the last three to four months because I've been doing jujitsu but I know I get back to the gym and I'm doing six to eight weeks back again I'm probably going to bounce back to exactly where I was.
Speaker 1:So for you guys if there is a chunk of time you can train it's always beneficial to do it because you can reclaim it quicker and you don't actually have to do twenty, thirty, forty weeks in a row. I'm not saying do it purposely but the brakes are not detrimental, you will bounce back quicker and that's why it's always good to get going and get started. So that's a bit of good news in terms of training for you guys. I'm going to leave you with that for today. Hopefully, have a good weekend.
Speaker 1:This podcast is recorded on a Friday, so if it's replayed in the future, we want to replay this message. It could be any day. But have a good weekend. If you are looking to lose weight and stuff, be curious about the weekend intake, don't beat yourself up, track if you can, use the voice log, take photos, whatever you need, don't worry too much about perfect tracking, just get some consistent food logging And just enjoy yourself, man. Just enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1:You know, Wales are playing England. Wales are not on a good streak right now in rugby. Lost many games in a row, but getting improvement the last few days. Against the old enemy this weekend, so always pumped up for that. But, yeah, I will see you back here on Monday, guys.
Speaker 1:Do not panic. Do not catastrophize because it adds stress to your life, and you don't need to add more stress to your life. But adios, and I'll speak to you all on Monday.