How do you like your eggs in the morning?

I have never been a breakfast person. Heck, I have never been a morning person at all. In fact, it's fair to say, that since turning 18 and leaving the rigour of sixth form there are probably very few mornings I have actually seen. The concept that there might be more than one ten o clocks in a day was alien to me!

Of course, when you're not leaving your bed before midday, skipping breakfast is not a particular issue. However, this changed very quickly upon finishing my degree (still a heartbreaking sentence to write!) and entering the world of work. When you're awake, or even starting work, at seven am waiting until one or two for your first meal of the day suddenly becomes a huge issue!

Now unfortunately for me, as I think I have made clear in previous posts, I am an avid lover of sleep. I would even venture that I am sleep's biggest fan. There is nothing that can come between me and my bed. Therefore, although I quickly learnt that I needed to eat in the morning, my first instinct on sourcing out breakfast was to find something that I could eat on the go. Something which would provide a fast energy source. Something which would be just enough to tide me over until my actual first meal of the day. For me, this, came in the form of Milky Way bars. Yummy, chocolatey, light Milky Ways. At only 192 calories for both bars in a Milky Way duo, and with a sugary rush to power me through those hours I had previously slept through, I was sure I was on to a winner.

However, despite my love for both chocolate and sleep, I pretty quickly had to admit to myself that eating a Milky Way on the way to work is not the most healthy of diets. There's very little goodness at all in it, and despite the initial sugar rush I soon found I was crashing a couple of hours before lunch and craving more sugar to regain that energy boost. Something had to be done. 

Since leaving my student home and moving into my own little flat (such a scary, grown up thing to be able to say!) I have developed a new love for breakfast. I might even consider it my favourite meal of the day now! The sudden silence that accompanied nights in the flat meant that an early night, previously a luxury in a busy, social, student house, was now the norm. If you get a good nights sleep, and wake up rested, it's far easier to get out of bed and think about making a nutritious breakfast rather than blearily downing a coffee and running out of the door. 

There is the old cliché that breakfast is the most important meal of the day; it genuinely is. Breakfast is about ending the intermittent fast that we take over night, every night. If you haven't eaten since dinner at seven o clock the night before, and it's now one in the afternoon, you haven't eaten for a massive 18 hours! Not only will this make you feel run down, it will actually reduce your productivity and ability to concentrate at work. In essence, eat breakfast and you will perform better. Breakfast is also  important to kick start your metabolism in the morning. Not only that, research has demonstrated that people who skip breakfast in the morning are more likely to overeat later in the day. Indeed, people who regularly eat breakfast are far more likely than those who skip it to maintain a healthy BMI and the American Heart Association found that breakfast eaters were significantly less likely to be obese! Therefore, if you're trying to lose weight, breakfast really is essential! 

But of course, it's not just about eating breakfast but about eating the right breakfast. My milky way bar was clearly not the right breakfast to kick start my day. Sugary cereals are also not the best option, nor would a full English every day be particularly beneficial to maintaining a healthy weight! So what do I recommend?

My current favourite breakfast is:

Cornflakes: 

Topped with strawberries:

And half a banana:

Finished off with a couple of spoons of 0% fat greek yoghurt:

And normally accompanied with the good old British staple- a mug of tea:

So there you go, a nutritious breakfast which will energise you through the morning. The high fibre cereal helps keep you fuller for longer, healthy bacteria in the greek yoghurt helps maintain a healthy gut (but make sure you choose the low fat option), and the fruit thrown in contributes to your five a day whilst providing plenty of vitamins. Not only is it healthy but it tastes amazing.  Feel free to experiment with the fruit topping combinations. I'm also a big fan of cherries and banana (Cherries work out a cheaper option as well), however, I just could not resist those beautiful British strawberries in Tesco last time I went shopping. 

Have a tasty healthy breakfast of your own? Please let me know!

Nutritional Information

15g Cornflakes: 54 calories

Half a banana: 60 calories (approx)

100g Strawberries: 30 calories

Onken Fat Free Natural Yoghurt (75g approx): 34 calories

Total: 178 calories

Fat: >1g

Carbohydrates: 37g

of which Sugars: 11g

Fibre: 2g

Protein: 6g

Sources

http://sru.avifoodweb.com/nutrilearn_09_breakfast.pdf

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2014/05/05/the-health-benefits-of-greek-yogurt

Sleep yourself thin

A while back Channel 4 did a brilliant tv series called Secret Eaters. If you haven't seen it I seriously recommend it (all the episodes are on 4od). The premise of the show is that secret cameras follow two people, both of whom just don't understand why the weight keeps piling on instead of off. Normally they've drastically underestimated their calorie intake in a way that baffles me. One woman believed she was eating 1400 calories a day but was actually eating nearly 5000- that's some serious denial! But, apart from the fun of laughing at the people who omitted the large big mac and fries they had as an afternoon snack from their food diaries, the real hidden gems in the show were the experiments run into dieting.

(Image from http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/vwzry/secret-eaters--series-2---episode-1)

In one episode, Dawn Porter and her team investigated the effects of a disrupted nights sleep on weight loss. They took two groups, invited to the clinic under the premise of a bogus experiment, and whilst one group was allowed a perfect nights sleep the other was woken every few hours. The group who had a seriously disturbed nights sleep ate 35% more the next day!

Now this experiment became particularly relevant to me on Monday night. I had work at 7am on Tuesday so I called it a night at 11 on Monday in the hopes of a good nights sleep. Unfortunately, the house next door to me had other ideas, hosting a raging house party (which may I add was still ongoing when I was leaving for work). Seriously exhausted then, I spent the entirety of the day with the worst junk food cravings i've had in a long while. Just the thought of high fat food made me salivate. I can only compare it to that desperate need to carb up when your hungover. Not only was I craving quick fix sources of energy, the thought of going to the gym made me want to cry. I actually ended up having a two hour nap after work before I dragged myself onto a treadmill!

(Image from http://7bigspoons.com/sleep/sleep-better-eat-better/)

Indeed, countless studies have found the same results as me and secret eaters. One study found that people who get 7 hours of sleep a night are 30% more likely to be obese than those who get nine hours. Lack of sleep can make you gain weight by causing you to eat more and exercise less! If you're tired you are far more likely to reach for a fast source of energy, such as chocolate. On top of this, chances are that you will opt to collapse onto the sofa rather than head to the gym. Even worse, the sleep deprivation is likely to leave you unmotivated to cook and so takeaway, or a ready meal, become likely options.

Susan Zafarlotfi PHD said "Sleep dept is like credit card debt. If you keep accumulating credit card debt you will pay high interest rates or your account will be shut down until you pay it all off. If you accumulate too much sleep dept, your body will crash."

A particularly interesting study by Walker et al, published in the Journal of Natural Communications looked at the brain of people who had been sleep deprived compared to those who hadn't when viewing images of foods. They found that depriving people of sleep had a huge impact on the way their brain responded to high-calorie junk food. Junk food stimulated a stronger response in the areas of the brain which motivates us to eat, whilst simultaneously depleting activity in the frontal cortex where rational decisions are made. Participants were asked to rate the pictures of food and told they'd be given one of the ones they rated the highest to eat. On average, the foods they requested when sleep deprived were 600 calories HIGHER than the food they desired when well rested.  That's a huge difference!

So what's the solution? If you want to keep your weight down make sure you get a good nights kip! Next time someone moans at you for having a long lie-in in the morning, or being a social pariah and getting an early night, you can tell them with pride that you're serious about your health and fitness and those extra hours in bed are essential. I'm sure this is advice that students and young people everywhere will love!

(Image from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/385831893048203770/)

Sources

Secret Eaters- Channel 4

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/lack-of-sleep-weight-gain

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/tiredness-and-fatigue/Pages/lack-of-sleep-health-risks.aspx

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/how-sleep-loss-adds-to-weight-gain/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Cardio vs Weight training: how to spend your time in the gym!

 A huge proportion of girls avoid weights at the gym at all costs for fear of getting over muscly and butch. Or there's those of us who avoid them purely because of the macho guys continuously loitering around the machines making any girl who wonders into their territory feel slightly out of place! The big question for female fitness fanatics is cardio or weight training? In the battle of fat burning workouts which comes out as top dog?

On a minute by minute basis, cardio burns more calories than weight training making it the fast track to weight loss. However, a huge benefit of weight training over cardio is that it builds muscle. This makes you slimmer and leaner then you would be at the same weight if your exercise routine had been 100% cardio. One study found that a group of dieters lost 21lbs irregardless of whether they performed cardio exercise or strength training. Unfortunately for the cardio group, around 6lbs of this came from muscle whereas those doing weight training lost almost pure fat (Fetters 2013)! A combination of cardio and weight lifting then would ensure that a high number of calories were burnt but equally, that it is fat not muscle which is lost! Weight training will help you look and feel better in those crop tops and high waisted shorts than if you take the cardio only route.

Furthermore, simply having muscle in your body increases your metabolism consequently burning more calories. This effect isn't only present when exercising but continues after exercise has finished so even activities such as standing or sitting in front of the tv will burn more calories with muscle than fat! This is great news for anyone trying to lose weight as it means that your BMR will increase and the calories you eat are more likely to be used for energy as opposed to stored as fatty tissue in your body. One study found that 1kg of muscle burns 50 extra calories a day in comparison with 1kg of fat which only burnt 3 (Hawkey as cited in Harris)! Cardio, whilst effective for burning calories, doesn't have this same benefit on the metabolism. Moreover, it's unlikely to make a huge change to your overall body shape or leanness unless combined with some weight training!

Scarily, fat isn't just external but can grow around your internal organs and even in your bones. This can be hugely detrimental to health. In other words, you may look skinny after weight loss but that doesn't mean there isn't still visceral fat circulating inside your body damaging your liver and other vital organs! Even more scary is the fact that it is visceral fat, not the fat we can see, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, liver damage, heart disease and high blood pressure among other things! It is therefore a health threat which cannot be ignored!One study in the UK found that more than half of those studied with a normal BMI had excessive deposits of far around their heart and liver as well as streaked through their muscles! Consequently, fitness shouldn't just be about weight loss but lowering your body fat percentage. Weight training certainly trumps cardio here as it specifically burns fat whilst maintaining muscle; it will not just make you lose weight but help to reduce that dangerous visceral fat which puts your health at risk! The solution, make sure to include weight training in every work out you do in order to ensure you are not just losing weight but losing fat!

Cardio is still incredibly important to not just weight loss but health in general. Getting active and getting fit is not just about weight loss but about that overall fitness factor. Cardio exercise enables your lungs to process more oxygen with less effort, improves the rate the heart pumps blood at and increases supply of blood to the muscle. It thus reduces the risk of heart disease and vastly improves our respiratory systems. Furthermore, cardio exercise has been linked to a reduced risk of stress, anxiety and depression and an improved immune system putting you less at risk of physical illnesses such as colds and flu as well! For anyone looking to make a healthy, permanent lifestyle change, rather than just a diet then, cardio must be incorporated into the workout routine. The best benefits to fitness will come with a combination of cardio and weight training on a daily basis.

Don't worry girls, you don't have enough testosterone in your body to get butch without taking steroids or other supplements! The health benefits of weight training however, cannot be ignored! We therefore, need to ensure that we brave that masculine arena to venture into the weight machines to truly reap the awards of our fitness efforts!

(Credit to my lovely friend Emma Dean for these photos of me at the gym! Visit her beauty blog: http://dinosbeautydiary.blogspot.co.uk/ )


Sources

Much credit to my personal trainer Danny for giving me the foundation of this knowledge: http://ddsfitness.co.uk/
http://www.webmd.boots.com/fitness-exercise/guide/cardio-vs-strength?page=2
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/exercise/cardio-vs-weight-training.htm
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/cardio-vs-weight-training
http://lowfatcooking.about.com/od/healthandfitness/a/bodyfat.htm