Fixing the postural pains of the office
Neck ache, back ache, stiff hips, tight hamstrings and a lazy core are just some of the problems we face when we’re forced to sit for prolonged hours in the office. Follow these exercises and tips to keep yourself pain free and supple even while at your desk.
Neck ache, back ache, stiff hips, tight hamstrings and a lazy core are just some of the problems we face when we’re forced to sit for prolonged hours in the office. Follow these exercises and tips to keep yourself pain free and supple even while at your desk.
The best thing you can do outside the office to avoid postural dysfunctions, aches and pains is to simply move more.
Steady cardio like jogs or walks are great but they are very limited in terms of accessing our full potential to move and get strong. If you’ve followed my work for any length of time you will be aware of how biased I am in terms of my belief that everyone should follow a well programmed resistance training programme.
If you want help with a programme to follow at home or in a gym in order to get strong, get mobile, reduce your injury risk, get balanced, improve your physique, lose fat, gain muscle and improve your overall quality of life, check out my plans below or send me a message from the contact page.
The Supplements I recommend for a PRIME BODY
Supplements.
These are what I believe to be the 2 most important supplements to optimise your health and help you on the journey towards your PRIME.
I recommend keeping it simple in the beginning with just a Protein-Powder and a good quality Omega 3 fish oil. These are what I believe to be the 2 most important supplements to optimise your health and help you on the journey towards your PRIME.
Technically you could argue that Protein Powder isn’t really a supplement since ‘Protein’ its one of 3 entire macronutrients (The other two being Fat and Carbohydrate) and it’s touted as the most important of the three. A protein shake can more accurately be seen as a helpful snack to help balance your macronutrient ratio. It’s such a useful cost-effective addition to a persons diet to help them reach adequate daily protein intake. People not reaching adequate protein intake is one of the biggest hurdles to improving their body composition (increasing lean tissue and decreasing fat ) and overall transformation.
Another more common hurdle is the over-consumption of calories. Increasing protein intake can help with this too: Protein is more satiating than carbohydrates –meaning it makes you feel fuller. Protein also requires more energy (calories) to be digested compared to carbs and fats. Win/Win.
*The importance of GOOD QUALITY protein is discussed further down the page so keep reading.Omega 3 Fish Oil : The most important factors to consider when choosing an omega 3 supplement are
a) Quality. Even ‘good’ fatty acids are bad for you if they are rancid or are contaminated with heavy metals for instance.
b) What is the actual content of EPA and DHA of the capsule or liquid you’re taking? (these are the amazing fatty acids of Omega 3 fats). If the ratios of EPA and DHA aren’t upward of 50-60%, find new ones.
c) Plant-based omegas 3 capsules don’t cut it. They contain ALA which must be converted by our bodies into the brain healthy EPA and DHA fatty acids. However the conversion is so poor that you will never get enough without extremely high intake.
*ALA ~ DHA 0.5-5% conversion , ALA~EPA 1-10%conversion. Don’t waste your time or money on itI recommend taking a fish oil that has vitamin D included in it. If yours does not, then you should take a separate vitamin D supplement over the winter months or potentially all year if you limit your sun exposure excessively.
After prioritising the 2-3 mentioned above, if you have the flexibility to add additional supplements to your regime, these are what I recommend.
4. I also recommend a pre-bed supplement consisting of Zinc, Magnesium and one or more calming compounds like L-theanine, Ashwaganda root, 5-HTP.
Magnesium is one of the most useful minerals involved in over 300 enzymatic processes in our body. Zinc is an important one for the immune system as well as protein synthesis (muscle building) and is great at optimising our sex hormones.
My favourites for this, which I’ll often rotate is ZZZZ from Form
and Unplug by Motion Nutrition
5. Another supplement everyone should take is creatine. It is not just for body-builders –as is commonly assumed. Interestingly recent research has indicated it's also great for brain health and can have some cognitive enhancing benefits. So although I recommend EVERYONE should dedicate a few hours of the week to resistance training, creatine can benefit you even if you aren’t lifting weights. I put a 5 gram scoop in my protein powder daily. As long as the supplement is ‘creatine monodrate’ you cant really go wrong with where you source this powder.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS MANAGED
Lastly, if it’s affordable to you, I recommend getting regular full panel blood tests in order to identify any nutrient deficiencies unique to you. This is especially important if you are vegan or vegetarian as deficiencies are far more likely and extreme. I also get my sex hormones checked 2-3 times a year via simple pin prick tests. I think of these as great predictors or recovery and stress but also the canary down the mine for a bunch of other ailments.
Checking your sex hormones are optimal will ensure you’re squeezing the most amount of potential out your physical training as well as boosting your mood (and sex-life). In NZ I go to my G.P for these tests but in the U.K I order my test from OPTIMALE.
Women in the UK can use THRIVA.
Most westernised countries will have their own similar order-online-home-testkits that you can google.
Check below for my Protein-Powder and Omega 3 fish oil brand recommendations:
FORM NUTRITION
FORM NUTRITION have a range of different Protein-Powder. I highly recommend their ‘Performance Protein’ range (any flavour) as is contains a good amount of Leucine and most plant-based protein powders lack enough.
Leucine is the most important amino acid (building blocks of protein) for muscle protein synthesis (muscle growth).
Unfortunately it is an all or nothing principle: If you don’t achieve the 2.5-3.0g threshold of Leucine from a shake – Or any meal of the day for that matter – Your body will not switch into an ‘Anabolic’ / muscle and tissue building phase. The alternative is that you body spends longer in the reciprocal stage of ‘catabolism’ where in is continually breaking down tissue to recycle amino acids.
In short: the more anabolic phases you can switch into during a day the more lean tissue you can build and/or maintain.
*Obviously you want to do this without consuming more calories than your current goal. Hence why protein is the most important macronutrient target to reach.
If you prefer and tolerate whey protein, this will always contain enough leucine too.
I prefer their Omega 3 pills that contain vitamin D3 for winter time.
Read More about the importance of Vitamin D in this blog I originally wrote for Bare Biology.
The How and Why PRIMEBODY works
Find out why PRIME BODY is the best Online-Training programme for you and how it works.
The majority of physical changes in any plan will come from your nutrition. This is irrespective of whether your goal is weight loss or weight gain. This doesn’t mean the training isn’t important: The training is what dictates the resulting tissue make up and aesthetic of your body while utilising the food and nourishment you provide.
In the case of fat-loss, we make progress by my manipulating the various macronutrients; Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat while respecting the calories-in vs calories-out principle. Over the span of days, weeks and months, monitoring intake and gaining awareness of how much food and in what ratios of macro-nutrients you should be aiming for will help to reduce cravings, stabilise appetite and progressively reduce your overall caloric intake versus your bodies overall calorie expenditure throughout the day.
This can all be achieved without overly restrictive bland diets that sap our motivation and it can also be done without stressing our bodies.
CALORIC DEFICIT = WEIGHT LOSS
Fat loss can only be achieved by ingesting less calories than the body requires over a given period of time. However this doesn't mean we always need to count calories to in order achieve a calorie-deficit and force our bodies to burn stored fat. There is a reason men and women (as recently as our grand parents generations and forever earlier) were almost never obese, seldom over weight and almost all had abs. They moved more, and they ate real food. It’s so much harder to fall metabolically ill or become overweight from eating unprocessed food.
REAL FOOD
We have evolved to respond hormonally to all the different enzymes and nutrients in real food. This is what keeps our health and physiques in balance, and is why we're designed the way we are. Our bodies, when healthy, do not want to carry extra weight around or stay sitting for the entire day. The existence of processed hyper-palatable (sweet and salty) food, trips this circuit. This is a primary pillar of fat-loss: ditching (or at least greatly reducing) our processed food intake. These foods aren't produced with fat-loss in mind (even most products with the term 'fat-loss' in their title). They're produced with the goal of deceiving you into buying and eating more. This doesn’t mean processed foods can never be eaten. On the contrary. I want people on my plans to be able to enjoy their lives and their vices. But I want them to understand WHY vices (in the form of processed foods) need to be managed and should ‘compliment’ a balanced intake rather than be the foundation.
Whilst maintaining a healthy diet, we create either a manageable calorie deficit (for fat loss) or calorie surplus (muscle gain) using either a calorie baseline* to track (recommended) and/or portion sizes that are unique to the individual for when calorie tracking isn’t possible or isn’t preferred. Both Calorie-Baseline scores (including macronutrient targets) and the portion method of meal construction are provided with every new online-training plan purchased from my website .
THE BASICS
If we are not taking in enough energy (calories) that we require throughout the day, our bodies will resort to burning more stored body-fat instead. If we supply adequate protein intake along with a calorie surplus and exercise, we will build lean muscle.
Yes, It is also possible to build muscle while losing fat in a calorie deficit providing the deficit is subtle and the protein intake is adequate. However this is more often common in beginner-lifters (or those with blessed genetics) rather than those more experienced lifters who have already maximised all their early muscle gain potential.
HORMONES
Most diets out there on the internet promise rapid weight-loss, usually by completely omitting an entire macro nutrient (carbohydrates, protein or fat). Although a person may lose weight fast initially, they tend to rebound after the diet ends –if they reach the end– and regain all the weight lost. This is because the diet has been too stressful and restrictive both mentality and physically and our hormones respond accordingly. Our bodies need and crave balance internally as well as externally. We are at the mercy of our all our hormones. Poor dieting and inadequate nutrition can cause disruption to our mood-enhancing hormones, blood-sugar and appetite hormones, sex hormones and even the hormones in charge of our energy output enabling us to exercise at our best. Hormones tell all the various cells and nutrients in our bodies what to do and can heavily influence our psychology.*
*Food companies cottoned on to this mechanism decades ago which is why you'll find most processed foods centred around carbohydrates (along with processed fats to increase shelf-life). They aren't satiating so we always want to eat more, and the insulin response is unnaturally high so our bodies clear out too much blood sugar which further compounds the hunger we feel later on. The (processed) food industry has ALWAYS been about profit, not health. Remember this.
A prime example of how this can go wrong is illustrated here:
An overindulgence of hyper-palatable (making us want to eat more) processed high carbohydrate/ sugar foods creates a high surge of insulin release from our pancreas. This tells our body to clear the excess sugar (energy) and shuttle it to wherever it can: Muscles, liver or fat cells. Because the hyper-palatable foods around today are not something our bodies have evolved to deal with, this process causes too much blood sugar/ energy to be cleared from the blood stream causing us to feel tired and sleepy and very adverse to physical activity. Our bodies switch the hunger hormones back on in order to bring on more energy to fight the slump.
This is why people that eat carb heavy breakfasts of cereals, toast and jam (processed forms of carbohydrates) tend to find themselves hungry again by 10am.
NB: Be aware, this does not mean any one food is ‘bad’. Nor does it mean carbs should be avoided. What it does mean is that people who struggle with controlling their appetite can often find a lot of benefit from understanding the mechanisms of hunger and experimenting with various dietary techniques that modify the timing of when they eat particular foods. Two strategies that can help understanding these mechanisms are Carb-Backloading or Intermittent-Fasting (More on these later). Experimenting with reducing an/or switching out some of the foods that are troubling for them can be ground breaking for many who struggle with their intake. Just be aware that its calories in VS calories out that matters at the end of the day, so find a method that works for you.
HACKING THE HUNGER HORMONES
If weight loss is the goal, a strategy everyone should at least try is to center the breakfast meal around healthy fat and high protein based breakfasts –with little or no carbs until later in the day (Carb-Backloading). The high protein and fat meal keeps us far more satiated for hours to come. As an advanced strategy, Intermittent Fasting is also an option with similar affects. This is where breakfast (or dinner) is omitted completely, and all food throughout the day is consumed within a smaller window of time, often 8 hours: An eating window of 1pm-9pm is an example of I.F. where breakfast has been skipped.
The benefit of avoiding carbs until later in the day, is that we become more insulin-sensitive. This means the body won't need to release as much insulin to clear blood sugar (the derivative of carbohydrates). We are further sensitised to insulin over time by eating only real / natural carbohydrates and avoiding processed forms. This is one of the ways PRIME BODY optimises health in the long term.
MACROS
PROTEIN
From the Greek 'Proteos' meaning 'of most importance' and for good reason. From head to toe proteins are the building blocks that make us. Your body is in a constant state of renovation, so replacing protein and providing new building blocks for your new body is essential. Protein is portioned at every meal in PRIME BODY. Its also very satiating which keeps the hunger hormones at bay.
1g of protein = 4 calories
FATS
Although fats contain the highest concentration of energy/ calories, they get a bad wrap. They are extremely satiating (you feel full after eating them) and they are also crucial, in small amounts, to neural, gut, brain and hormonal health. Our plans clearly explain how much fat (and which kinds) you can include in your meals so don't fear them. However they are calorific so it is possible to over do them.
1g of fat = 9calories
CARBOHYDRATES
These are the food types that have the most influence over our appetite. Ingestion of carbs and the energy (sugars) they contain trigger the release of the hormone insulin, which shuttles the energy from the blood into our muscle cells. If the muscle cells have not been depleted of energy prior to this, insulin shuttles the excess energy to the liver where it is converted into fat to be stored in fat tissue. The subsequent drop in blood sugar triggers our appetite all over again. Essentially this insulin mechanism can make carbs very moreish and less satiating encouraging us to eat more.
This does not mean carbs are evil. No macro is. Carbohydrates and insulin do help unlock our muscle cells to usher in new amino acids from protein when the cells have been depleted of energy (exercise), so they can be great for us, particularly to aid muscle gain. Just make sure you earn them during your day.
1g of carbohydrate = 4 calories.
MORE ON THE RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES OF PRIME BODY PROGRAMMES:
The ‘Nutrition Fix’ is the nutrition plan that accompanies every PRIMEBODY online-training plan and can be found in every client’s app profile after purchase of a plan.
It advises to at least trial using the mechanism I mentioned earlier called:
CARB-BACKLOADING
This is where carbs are only consumed at the end of the day (and/or after a workout), and thus, their energy is shuttled to muscle cells that have been emptied of their energy over the course of the day due to normal function and/or from bouts of exercise. This process replenishes cell energy and aids repair and rebuilding along with protein.
On non-training days we tend to have a smaller requirement for carbohydrates as muscle cells will not have been as emptied.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
I.F. is also every effective and preferred by many. Its based on a 16/8 or 14/10 ratio of 'not eating' vs 'eating' time window. The 16 or 14 hour represents the 8 or so hours we sleep plus an additional 6-8 hours that we abstain from food once awake, or 8 hours of abstinence before bed if that is preferred.
However closing the eating window after the evening meal and skipping breakfast after waking tends to be the preferred method of racking up 16 hours of food abstinence.
This dieting strategy has been shown to do some really cool things for your immune system when your body is given a break from digesting for a little longer. Autophagy is a process whereby your immune cells go around eating up and killing dead, dying, diseased and even pre-cancerous cells, and this kicks into gear when we go a little longer without food now and then.
Once acclimatised to not feeling the need to feed all day long, many people who regularly fast report periods of acute mental clarity during their fast, rather than post-meal lethargy we’re all familiar with. This is not by coincidence either, in evolutionary terms it wouldn’t make much sense that we lost our wits after skipping a meal. Conversely, it makes far more sense that a state of higher mental alertness would aid us in our next hunt or scavenge once we’ve been without food. It is my belief –and evolutionary biology suggests– that humans were not designed to have food in their stomach at all hours of day light or eating every few hours. During fasting there is also more blood being pumped through the brain rather than being continually diverted to the digestive tract 24/7.
Fasting can obviously be an effective way to lose fat and improve body composition , especially for those who prefer bigger meals to feel full, as 1-2 meals will be larger than 3 smaller meals of equal overall calories. In no way is this ever recommended for someone with an eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia. Intermittent Fasting should always be well planned and centre around real food
Intermittent fasting is a hot topic for research at present and so far there is evidence for these additional benefits:
Protection against neurological disease
Helps increase insulin sensitivity (good) and lowers blood sugar
Reduction in heart disease risk: blood pressure and circulating cholesterol levels
Links to longevity in many species including mammals
Reduces overall inflammation throughout the body
FASTED TRAINING
Adapting to training while fasted happens relatively quickly. However if you’re training right near the end of your fast and the session is demanding, you may want to have some fruit, a shake or a drink with some carbs in it in case you ‘hit the wall’ during a session.
PRIME BODY APP uses can chose to stay on whatever dieting strategy they prefer and helps them with their goals. Both strategies are effective and sustainable after the 12 week plan, even when more flexible choices of food are preferred. Best of all these strategies help improve clients relationship’s with food. The strategies also re-teach people what hunger really is: when its real and when its just habitual hormonal-triggering without an actual biological need.
If your goal is muscle gain, and you've always struggled to gain weight, i wouldn't recommend intermittent fasting as a method and i would recommend including carbs in your earlier meals of the day as well as the later ones. Overall energy and protein turnover is important.
Get in touch if you have any questions, nutritional based or otherwise!