How to get better sleep - 5 tips part 1

The importance of good quality and sufficient duration sleep is highly underestimated in today’s busy society. 

Research clearly shows the vast majority of the population function optimally on 7-8 hours sleep per night.

There are a very small percentage of people who can thrive on less and it is often the case a person can become accustomed to having inadequate sleep and that becomes their baseline normal.

This issue with this state is that your performance will be decreased and you are potentially setting yourself up for future health problems.

Sleep is a crucial recovery period for the body where tissues are regenerated and especially in the case of cancer malfunctioning cells are broken down by the body. Alzheimer’s disease is also increasingly being recognised as a side effect of poor sleep. Poor sleep duration can also be correlated to a shorter lifespan.

Here are 5 tips on optimising your sleep-

1. Create a regular sleep schedule.

Aim to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. Your circadian rhythm has a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns hence the feeing of jet leg when crossing time zones. 

Sleeping later on weekends won't fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week  however you may claw back some recovery. If you do lay in aim to go to bed at the same time as a week night though on Sunday to ensure you get back to your routine.

2. Avoid alcohol too close to bedtime

Having a "nightcap" or alcoholic beverage before sleep may seem like a good idea to help you relax. It's sedating at first, so it can help you fall asleep, but can interfere with staying asleep. It will rob you of deep sleep and REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep.

Heavy alcohol ingestion may also contribute to impairment in breathing at night. 

It’s best to avoid alcohol 3-4 hours before bed.

3. Avoid caffeine and nicotine 8 hours before bed 

Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as 8 hours clear your system. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it harder for you to fall asleep at night.

Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly in addition to the effects on breathing. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal.

4. Dim the lights and avoid electronic devices. 

Bright light can promote a feeling of wakefulness, as too can the light from computers, tablets and mobile phones.

Switch off from your electronic devices as much as possible 1-2 hours before bed.

Using candlelight or other softer sources of lighting can also to help create better environment to prepare us for sleep.

5. Take Magnesium before bed

One of the most consistently successful ‘bio hacks’ I’ve used with my clients is for them to introduce magnesium supplementation 45 minutes before bed.

The modern stressors of living and overall poorer food quality tends to leave people depleted in magnesium.

Insomnia is a common symptom of Magnesium deficiency. Magnesium plays a role in supporting deep, restorative sleep by maintaining healthy levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter that promotes sleep. Low GABA levels in the body can make it difficult to relax. 

Magnesium is a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems that regulate diverse biochemical reactions in the body, including protein synthesis, muscle and nerve function, blood glucose control, and blood pressure regulation [ 1-3 ]. Magnesium is required for energy production, oxidative phosphorylation, and glycolysis.

Magnesium can also help insomnia that’s linked to the sleep disorder restless-leg syndrome and cramps.

I recommend taking 500-600 mg of a either a magnesium gycinate or taurate 45 min’s before bed on an empty stomach. I will post a more detailed article on the importance of magnesium in future.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/

Further Reading

If you are interested in learning more about sleep I’d highly recommend the book ‘Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker’.

How to have the best workout - 5 tips

Lifting weights is literally a superpower in regards to the positive effects on health & longevity.

It can be one of the most rewarding things you can incorporate into your life. However if some key foundations to your training is missing it can become a frustrating and ultimately demotivating endeavour. Here are 5 ways to avoid this trap and optimise what you are doing-

1, Use the biggest bang for buck exercises

Research shows that exercises that recruit the most amount of muscle also will deliver you the most results and a most time effective fashion.

Your exercising should be built upon a foundation-

• Squatting

• Deadlifting

• Lunging

• Pushing

• Pulling

• Carries

There are many variations of these movements that can by cycled between with each programme and some variations may suit certain proportions better than others.

You can be assured you’ll be making progress if your numbers are steadily increasing on these movements.

Now this is not to say that i’m against isolation exercises, I come from a bodybuilding background and so have extensive knowledge on how to build muscle. Isolation exercises certainly have value for certain muscle groups and for maintaining structural balance.

However in the grand scheme of programme planning they should be tertiary, especially if time is very limited.

2, Set a time limit

Giving yourself a deadline of being in and out of the gym in say 45-75 mins will pressure you to stick to your your rest periods and not faff around getting distracted by other stuff.

Certain rest periods will be required between sets so i’m not promoting jumping the gun on these as the body does need time to recover between sets for optimal performance.

However if the programme is designed intelligently this will be taken into account and the time spent should still be efficient & effective.

3, Elminate all distractions

With increasing discussion of transhumanism; ie being integrated into our technology I’d argue we are already there in the way we are constantly plugged into our phones today. Emails, text’s social media and other apps bleed away our time and concentration.

When you are in the gym I recommend you either put your phone on airplane mode or elminate it completely.

There should be no more input than some music if it helps you to keep focused.

You could use an app, spreadsheet or even paper diary (retro idea eh!?) to track your gym workouts.

4, Have a plan

You should have a programme well established that you commit to sticking to for 6-8 weeks.

Going to the gym and then deciding what you are doing that day is a good way to have a crappy workout. Think of it as a project and that you are committing to working on that project for the allotted time.

5, Have someone to hold you to account

Self motivation is a finite resource.

Having a peer who also likes to exercise or a trainer to keep tabs on the consistency of your frequency and progression is a valuable way to help push yourself harder.

Gym training should be an egoless pursuit when it comes at the expense of your exercise form breaking down but it does require some grit and hard work in order to progress.

You must expose your body to something difficult in order to give it the signal to repair and come back stronger in order to better handle it the next time. This is a key foundation of why the body adapts positively from training.

Three Principles Of Fat Loss

In this article I cover three fundamental principles for creating fat loss- 

1, Regulate Total Calories

In order to loose fat you have to create a calorie deficit. 

So how many calories do you need in order to lose weight? 

I’ve experimented with numerous different formula’s but over time I’ve found the best one is simple your bodyweight in pounds (kilos x 2.2) generally multiplied by either 12-14 as your starting point to establish a baseline. 

Now this is always going to be a best guess and factors such as your individual metabolism and activity levels will have an impact on what multiplier you use. Some people might have to even go down to 10 in order to get them into a deficit if their activity levels are low. 

Select a number and see how things progress. Adjust the number up or down as appropriate to align with you loosing body fat at the right speed. Generally I recommend trainees to aim to lose at most 0.5kg per week. Your total calories over time will also gradually need to be adjusted down as the diet progresses in order to continue to support fat loss. 

Example – Bodyweight 75 KG x 2.2 = 165 lbs x 14 = 2,310 KCAL

This part is absolutely critical, If you have no idea accurately how much you are eating its akin to shooting a shotgun into a dark room and hoping you hit something.

Tracking macros & calories indefinitely isn’t essential for fat loss or maintaining a healthy weight.

However a time period of tracking your food is a useful tool to educate yourself on the nutritional composition of different foods so that you are then able to make better decisions when not tracking. 

Practice this skill, learn to eye ball portions of food and initially measure it to see how accurate you can get. Make it a game. 

Your mindset and how your approach this is important. Remind yourself this is a good thing you are doing for yourself, you will be building a lifelong skill that can help promote better health for the rest of your life.

2, Adequate Protein Intake

You have your calories, now you calculate total protein. This needs to be high enough to support essential body needs and for recovery from training. Protein requirement is increased during a diet and in the absence of adequate dietary intake your body will break down more muscle tissue.

For periods of dieting I like to set it at 2 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. For advanced athletes who are already low in body fat it may have to be increased even further as the diet progresses. 

Example – 75 kg x 2 = 150 grams of protein daily

Protein has 4 kcal per gram so 150 grams of protein is 600 kcal

Your total calorie and protein intake in my experience are by far the two most important numbers to concentrate on. 

3, Carbohydrates & Fats

So with 2,310 KCAL minus 600 KCAL for the protein the remaining 1,710 KCAL can be divided evenly between fats & carbs.

Carbohydrate 855 kcal / 4 calories = 213.75 (214) grams

Fat 855 kcal / 9 calories = 95 grams

Totals

2310 KCAL

150 g Protein

214 g Carbohydrate

95 g Fat

From there it’s entirely up to you on personal preference how your split this up during the day. In general I guide my trainees to divide this up over 3-4 daily meals. Some people like an even spread of nutrients over each meal, others like to eat a bit lighter in earlier meals to create more ‘allowance’ to have a larger meal in the evening which they maybe are sharing with loved ones.

Example 1 - Even spread over 4 meals 

578 KCAL

38 g Protein

53 g Carbohydrate

23 g Fat

Example 2 - 4 meals but with a larger evening allowance

Meals 1-3

472 KCAL

38 g Protein

35 g Carbohydrate

20 g Fat

Meal 4 

895 KCAL

45 g Protein

100 g Carbohydrate

35 g Fat

My only preference here to help optimise protein synthesis over the whole day is to ensure you get 3-4 servings of 25-50 grams of a high quality protein source.

From personal exerience 4 is the best so that each meal is not too large and you get the body protein synthesis.

The distribution of the other nutrients is much less important in the grand scheme of things. 

Wrap up

Nutrition is literally a magic bullet in regards to regulating your body composition.

Certainly the more active you are overall your overall daily calorie requirements are which will allow you to “get away with more” but overall its very very hard to out train a poor diet.

Now there are certainly additional strategies to help further optimise your diet which I will cover in future articles, however without first creating the strong foundation these are somewhat redundant.

Fat Loss Explained

In this article I address some key principles to focus on when your goal is fat loss-

1, You must create a calorie deficit

In order lose body fat you must create a deficit to your energy intake.

This can be achieved through changes to your eating or increases in your activity levels. I find changes to your eating the most efficient as it’s a lot easier to consume calories than it is to burn them. 

As a diet progresses and you lose fat you will have to gradually keep reducing the amount of calories you consume in order to continue to lose fat.

A lighter body expends less energy to move around in everyday activities and so your body as part of its survival mechanisms will attempt to balance this out by reducing your metabolic rate.

This is temporary and after a period of dieting this will gradually return to normal, you are not creating any long term damage. 

Keep these adjustments downwards small, no more than 5-10% at any given time.

You want to lose fat on as many calories as possible as this helps to maintain you energy levels for exercise and everyday life and combat levels of hunger.

You want to avoid you getting too ‘hangry’ as this is going to make you and probably others around you feel miserable and more likely to lead you to falling off of the wagon and binging. 

2, Strength training

You lose fat by creating a calorie deficit. Now in order to get your body to loose body fat rather than lean body mass (muscle) you have to give it a reason to retain that lean body mass. Strength training provides this stimulus and will help you ultimately achieve that ‘toned’ look once your body fat is low enough.

Creating a deficit to lose fat without this concurrent strength training means that a greater proportion of the weight you lose will come from lean body mass and whilst you will certainly over time still lose fat you’ll also lose lean body mass which will likely leave you with a less than aesthetically pleasing ‘skinny fat’ look.

Now this doesn’t mean that you have to go all in and start training like a bodybuilder, far from it. This is a common misperception that puts many people off of lifting weights. Bodybuilding is a very specialised pursuit and it takes years of consistent focused training to achieve that ‘look’.

For the average person weight lifting in addition to preserving lean mass when dieting will make your body firmer and you’ll look & feel better naked.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28507015/

3, Keep your overall daily activity levels high (NEAT)

Creating a calorie deficit is in nutshell subjecting your body to a small famine and body has some very clever in-built survival mechanisms to try to fight this.

One tactic it uses it to subconsciously encourage you to reduce what’s called your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). NEAT can account for quite a number of calories burned during a day on top of your BMR (Basel Metabolic Rate, the amount of calories you burn just to survive doing nothing).

Say you create a calorie deficit through food of 250 calories but at the same time subconsciously you start walking less, taking the elevator, lying down more etc. you’ll find that you can start to quickly make inroads on that calorie deficit and mint end up unconsciously sabotaging your results.

One easy way to counteract your levels of NEAT dropping is to monitor your daily step count. Say your average is 5,000 then aim to keep that constant throughout the ‘diet’, You may actually find upping this to 7,500 or even 10,000 steps per day as your bodyweight reduces will continue to help you lose body fat. A lighter body burns less calorie in every day activities.

• Get off a stop early or walk to work

• Use the stairs

• Get a stand up desk

• Manually clean things rather than using ‘labour saving’ devices.

• Plan a long walk at the weekend

• Find activities outside of the gym that get you active - Martial arts, dancing, climbing, swimming etc.

4, Optimise your Sleep Quality & Duration

Tigger knew the secrets to staying lean

A study highlighted to me in the book ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker showed the amount of sleep you have directly impacts what weight is lost when on a diet. 

In a study, 2 group of people were put on a calorie deficit. One group in addition to this had restricted sleep.

Both groups on average lost a similar amount of weight.

However, for the participants who got only 5 1/2 hours sleep the amount of fat mass relative to lean body mass was significantly reduced- 1.3 pounds of fat and 5.3 pounds of fat-free mass compared to the group who got 8 1/2 hours sleep- 3.1 pounds of fat and 3.3 pounds of fat-free body mass.

In addition to this the sleep restricted group had increased levels of hunger as their Ghrelin levels (‘hunger hormone’) increased.

This very starkly illustrates the importance of getting good sleep. This should be an areas in addition to neutron that you should invest time in.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101004211637.htm

Here’s an article I wrote on improving your sleep - 15 Tips to Better Sleep

5, Set realistic goals and be patient

You don’t get out of or into shape overnight

Fat loss in order to make it sustainable and create a healthy relationship & lifestyle shouldn’t be a sprint.

Yes certainly you can have brief periods of dieting with a large calorie deficit but these should only be used for short periods of time and are unsustainable. From my experience of helping hundreds of clients, a slower more consistent timeframe for fat loss wins the day.

Adherence is ultimately the key. It’s all well & good creating a deficit for 5 days of the week but then at the weekend if you fill your boots on high calorific food and especially liquid calories (alcohol, with an added effect of reducing sleep quality) it’s very possible to sabotage the very deficit that you’ve created over the week. 

A useful strategy is to set your calories slightly lower during the week to allow for more of a ‘buffer’ of calories at the weekend which will enable you to be social when eating out or cooking with your friends & family without ruining your deficit. This doesn’t mean you give yourself permission to eat in a gluttonous fashion.

How To Have A Good Workout- 4 Tips

Going to the gym is an time investment in improving your body, make sure you get the best return from your investment. Here are 4 simple tips on optimising your gym sessions-

1, Progressive Overload

If you want to change how your body looks you have to give it a reason to. Adaptions to training are simply a response by your body to being exposed to a ‘stress’ and then adjusting structurally (muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones), neurologically and chemically (energy systems) to better be able to handle this stress the next time.

Over time it’s essential to gradually push forwards to get stronger. If you are lifting the same weights that you did 3 years ago you’ll likely look the same.

On this theme it’s also important to stick to a particular set of exercises for some time in order to give yourself time to improve. Changing your programme too frequently doesn’t allow this to happen.

Generally I’d recommend to stick to a particular programme for at least 6-8 weeks. For more advanced lifters with several years of lifting experience sticking to the same exercises but adjusting the sets, reps & tempo after 2- 4 weeks can be sometimes be a strategy to promote continued progress. 

2, Good form, good form Dammit!

What good is a gym programme if you find yourself injured several times a year? Progress takes time and injuries can set you back weeks and even months. Unfortunately we loose gains we make in the gym faser than we create them.

Exercises have been created in mind to work a muscle through a full range of motion in order to maximise the adaptive response. For the majority of people using a full range of motion is your best strategy for safe & effective training. 

Using a partial range of motion can be useful for certain specific situations such as in Powerlifting & Strongman or if your sport has a particular demand to be strong in a narrow range of motion. Specialisation training to help get through sticking points.

However for most of the gym population its doing nothing more than stoking your ego and possibly increasing your risk of injury.

An additional benefit to using a full range of motion is the exercise is in itself a ‘loaded stretch’ so over time using a full range of motion can help to ‘unstick’ some areas that might otherwise feel tight. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23629583/

3, Emphasise Compound Movements First

Exercises such as the Squats, Deadlifts, Lunges, Chin/Pull-Up’s, Dips, Presses and Rows should be your bread & butter movements you spend the most time on when exercising. These types of exercises active the maximal amount of muscles.

Focusing your energy progressing from shoulder pressing overhead 30KG’s to 50KG’s is going to do much more for your shoulder development then performing 3 sets each of a front raises, side raises and rear deltoid raises with a 4kg’s weight. 

Similarly improving on being able to perform 3 Chin-up’s & Dips to being able to do 9 is going to do way more for your arm development than performing 8 different exercises for your biceps and triceps.

No don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with adding some supplementary direct arm, shoulder or glute work but only after doing the basics compound lifts first.

4, Set A Time Limit

Following on the previous recommendation you should set a time limit to the amount of time you spend on any given training session.

45-60 minutes maximum per session 3-4 x per week is optimal for most people. Whilst gym sessions can be longer some some spots specific purposes, I.E. when training some involving a lot technique like olympic lifting or requiring longer rest periods for maximum strength training & powerlifting this isn’t appropriate for most people.

I recommend to set strict rest intervals between your exercises and use either something like an old digital Casio watch or a dedicated timer so that you avoid the temptation of getting distracted by your phone. I am of the belief that Tinder has done much to ruin peoples gains over the years!

Get in, primarily focus on progressing on the big compound movements first and then leave. It’s a spiral diminishing returns to spend any more time than this.

Ultimately the gym should be a tool to help enhance your experience of life outside of the gym and should not be the sole focus of your spare time.