Too much of a good thing..

Are you overdoing it? 
By nutritionist Sarah West

 

Exercise and good nutrition are vital for good health, but like anything else it's possible to overdo it. With people becoming more and more body-conscious, many are resorting to drastic measures to achieve the physique they desire.

Excessive exercising or crash dieting can not only result in injury and fatigue but can also slow down your metabolism, inhibit muscle growth and repair, promote fat storage and reduce the effectiveness of your immune system. This can not only stall your health goals but may lead to irreversible health problems in the future. So don’t push it too hard!

Over-training:

 

It’s easy to assume that to see better results you should increase the time spent on your exercise routine – but in actual fact you may need to do less. Resting is an important part of a workout; if you don't take time for proper rest, your body won't adapt to the stress of your training and you won't get stronger or faster. Follow these tips to avoid exercise burnout and get more from your routine-  

•  Listen to your body; the simplest way of knowing if you are over training is if your progress has stopped or slowed and if you are constantly tired and sore. This signals time to take a break and make some changes.

• Always ensure you leave 24 hours between hard workouts to rejuvenate your body to be ready for the next exercise session. Try to sleep a full seven hours and eat varied, nutritious meals during this time.

• Experiment with additional rest days or doing slightly less in each workout until you find a routine that keeps you progressing without feeling exhausted.

Feeling hungry?

Diets that severely restrict calories or the intake of entire food groups deprive your body of the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that it needs to sustain itself. Furthermore, studies have shown that crash dieting can result in unhealthy behaviours such as eating disorders and increases the chance that the lost weight will be quickly re-gained. 

The key to remaining healthy and keeping weight off long-term is instead to make sensible changes to your diet that you can stick to for life. Follow these tips to achieve weight loss the healthy way-

• Never eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day. Calorie restriction to this extent actually impedes your weight loss goals since your body goes into famine-mode.
• Accept a steady rate of weight loss rather than aiming for overnight success. A loss of 1-2 pounds per week is a sensible goal.
• Small changes make a big difference. One extra biscuit a week can lead you to gain 5lb a year – so by cutting that biscuit out of your diet you'll lose the same amount.
• Try not to eliminate whole food groups (i.e. fat, protein or carbs)- instead you are working toward a sustainable lifestyle change which involves having a healthy relationship with all kinds of food.
• Be patient and persevere. It might take a week or two before you notice any changes, but they will steadily appear. When it comes to weight loss, slow and steady wins the race!