The benefits of HIIT training

The benefits of HIIT training

There’s an ongoing debate about cardio: which one is more beneficial? HIIT or steady state cardio? It depends on your goal and even your bodytype. Some people can get away with the mind numbing steady state cardio – which is a lot more comfortable, let’s be honest. However it doesn’t work for everyone. If you have been doing that for quite some time it might have stopped working for you – because let’s be honest, your body will get used to most things and will adapt in time. Then it might be a wise idea to step it up to HIIT cardio.

Anyone can benefit from HIIT cardio: elite athletes and everyday people who just want to lose a bit of weight.

So what are the benefits of HIIT?

#1 When you perform high intensity training, glycogen is your preferred fuel that is stored in your muscles. To do more high intensity workouts we need a bigger reserve of muscle glycogen stores. This will allow you to train harder for longer. In addition it will allow for a greater carbs tolerance which means you can eat more carbs and store them as refuel, instead of fat.

#2 Improved aerobic fitness: your body can take in more oxygen and deliver it to your muscles, enabling you to perform faster for longer.

#3 Greater fat burning: some time ago it was the ‘fat burning zone’ on the cardio machine. If you wanted to burn fat, you had to be in the fat burning zone. HIIT burns more fat, because the quicker you deplete your muscle glycogen stores, the sooner your body will tap into your stored fat for fuel. HIIT training depletes muscle glycogen stores because the main fuel for HIIT is glycogen.

#4 Improved capacity for exercise: if you’re doing high intensity – or I could call it metabolic type – weight training, HIIT can increase your capacity for exercise. By increasing our aerobic capacity we can go harder for longer which can help you burn more calories = lose more weight.

#5 Improved insulin sensitivity: One major risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes is reduced insulin sensitivity. If you have normal insulin sensitivity, then insulin can help you shuttle the carbs into your muscles, instead of your fat cells.

#6 You boost your metabolism and get an afterburn: Resistance training has a different effect on your body opposed to endurance training. Resistance training increases excess post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOS). EPOS describes the calories you burn immediately after the training session, also known as the ‘afterburn’ effect.

If you want to step up your training, want to lose weight or just need a change in your training routine, get in touch!

Bespoke metabolic type resistance training plans are available hello@tamaramakar.me

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Answering some common questions 1.

I have been receiving a few questions related to my previous posts and in general. I will answer them on here regularly, so keep them coming.

What are electrolytes:

Electrolytes are mineral salts dissolved in the body’s fluid. They include:

* sodium,
* chloride,
* potassium and
* magnesium,
and help to regulate the fluid balance between different body compartments (for example, the amount of fluid inside and outside a muscle cell), and the volume of fluid in the bloodstream.

The water movement is controlled by the concentration of electrolytes on either side of the cell membrane. For example, an increase in the concentration of sodium outside a cell will cause water to move to it from inside the cell. Similarly, a drop in sodium concentration will cause water to move from the outside to the inside of the cell. Potassium draws water across a membrane, so a high potassium concentration inside cells increases the cell’s water content.

 

What are glucose polymers and maltodextrins?
Between a sugar (1– 2 units) and a starch (several 100,000 units), although
closer to the former, are glucose polymers (maltodextrins). These are chains
of between 4 and 20 glucose molecules produced from boiling corn-starch
under controlled commercial conditions.
The advantage of using glucose polymers instead of glucose or sucrose in a
drink is that a higher concentration of carbohydrate can be achieved (usually
between 10 and 20 g/ 100 ml) at a lower osmolality.

 

What are multiple transportable carbohydrates?
This term refers to a mixture of carbohydrates (e.g. glucose and fructose;
maltodextrin and fructose) in sports drinks. These carbohydrates are
absorbed from the intestine by different transporters, and using a mixture
rather than a single type of carbohydrate in a sports drink overcomes the
usual limitation of gut uptake of carbohydrate.

 

I would like to bulk up, how can I do that?
As you probably know, putting on muscle (or shredding fat) lies in your diet/nutrition. If you’d like to put on muscle mass, first thing you need to do is to revise your protein intake. Do you know how much protein you take in? 100 gr of chicken breast contains 25-30 gr protein, 100 gr of white fish has about 24 gr, 100 gr of steak has about 25 gr of protein, 100 gr cottage cheese about 10 gr. Endurance athletes usually take about 1.2 – 1.7 gr protein/kg of bodyweight/day, and bodybuilders take a lot more than that to build muscle. Then you need to revise your carbohydrate intake as well. Carbohydrates/muscle glycogen is the primary energy source when training. If you don’t have enough muscle glycogen, your performance will suffer (less intensity, lighter weights = less muscle), and your body will use amino acids to convert to glycogen (less muscle building). The amount of carb you need to eat depends on a lot of factors: your insulin sensitivity and the rate of your metabolism. People with high metabolism can eat more carbs, and people with high insulin sensitivity (and low metabolism) have to watch their carb intake otherwise they will put on a lot of fat as well along with the muscle.

Keep the questions coming, I will reply to them regularly on here!
hello@tamaramakar.me

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Hercules Olympia and England

Had a fabulous weekend in England last weekend. It was all rush and not enough time for anything, but it was nice to stand on stage again and meet some of my friends, even only briefly.

Left Cairo Thursday afternoon, my flight was scheduled at 5.30 pm. On the way to the airport there was a traffic jam on the road – what a surprise! I was getting a bit anxious therefore I tried to check in on my phone so that I don’t miss that. When I logged on the application to check in, it told me that I couldn’t because the check-in was not available anymore as the flight was at 4.45 pm. It turned out that because the clocks went back a few weeks ago (in the UK, not in Egypt) therefore they changed the time for the flight – although they don’t tell this to you to warn you. So I was running really late and I was even checking my other options when I could travel if I’d missed this flight. But fortunately I got there in the very last minute and checked in. Going through security I’ve met some lovely people, one of them is Ramy who is training in MMA.airportRamy

Finally I got to London Heathrow at around 10 pm and made my way to Colchester on the train. I got to the hotel around 1 am, very exhausted. The next day I got up and went for a walk in the town centre. It is a lovely place, I really liked the atmosphere of the town. There was a market on the high street, and all the shops you can ask for. I realized how much I missed all these commodities and the green countryside. Cairo is very hot most of the year, even wintertime it’s only mild, not cold. You see the sun 24/7 almost, and the downside of it is that there’s not much rain, therefore there’s a lot of dust everywhere. It’s lovely to see the sun most of the time, and it truly makes up for most things: your mood is instantly better.

Anyway, so I tried to rest a bit on Friday , put a coat of tan on, had my wine in the evening and was waiting for Saturday to come.

Saturday was one of the longest days in my life. The registration was at 8 am at the venue, then we had a physique check where the judges checked all the ladies’ classes if everyone was in the right class, then we had an orientation meeting. This finished aorund 10.30am and the show started at 12pm. A break was planned to be at 4-5 pm, but when 4 pm came the show had not been even halfway through the classes that they planned on judging before the interval. That was a bit disappointing as my class was the second to the last after the interval. I was told the event was supposed to finish around 8 pm, and if there’s a delay then maybe around 9 pm. Well, eventually I got on stage at 10 pm, very tired and thirsty. Thankfully one of my friends was there with me and tried to distract me from all this.

There were 2 physique classes, open and masters and I entered the masters class, but because the event was running so late they merged the 2 classes and we ended up competing in the open class. In the open class I came 4th, but a few days later they posted the results for all the classes, so in the masters class I came 2nd. All the ladies looked great, really nice line up!

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After the competition I went to fill up a bit on some food and water. Enjoyed some sweets and a pizza (only one slice, I don’t know why I keep buying pizzas after a competition when I don’t even eat it 🙂

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The next morning we went to Harvester to have an all you can eat breakfast – something that I miss here in Egypt 🙂 the food was fabulous, I really enjoyed the pancakes and toast, although the bacon and sausage was a bit too salty for me after a competition diet.

After breakfast we made our way down towards Heathrow and we stopped in Cheshunt to pay a visit in my favourite gym, Monster Gym. I felt I had to use all those extra calories so I had a wicked back workout there. I was also happy to see that my photos are still on the wall 🙂

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After training we headed to Langley to meet some friends and have my long awaited steak at the Harvester – yes, I know, it was my favourite place and I really miss it!

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The next day I was flying back to Cairo. I had a lovely weekend there and I’m planning on going back in July or August as I couldn’t get to my stuff I left in London, because of the lenght of time and also because my friend who keeps them safe for me was away for work on that weekend.

Back to training now, preparing for the next competition. Watch this space!

Thank you Space Fitness and Panatta for making this trip possible!

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Muscle Mania registration

Yesterday I went to Balance Gym Tagamo to help register a friend of mine for Muscle Mania, and met a lot of other great athletes there, too.

Balance gym is a very well equipped gym in 2 locations in Cairo: in Tagamo and Sheraton. The Tagamo branch is the newer one with brand new Cybex equipment. I always liked training around in different gyms and I never mind travelling for a good gym to train certain body parts there. In the UK people always thought I was crazy because I used to travel an hour for a good gym for legs – well, probably you can see why… The results talk for themselves. When it comes to my training, I don’t compromise.

Muscle Mania Middle East will be held in Cairo next Friday (3rd April) and I really look forward to meeting all these phenomenal Egyptian athletes. Here are a few photos from yesterday:

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Feel free to come and say hi when you see me there!

Dehydration – water retention

Your body dehydrates if your fluid intake is less than what your body puts out. You lose fluids by breathing, sweating, exercising, urinating, vomiting etc so when your body doesn’t have enough fluids to carry out its normal functions, you get dehydrated.

The common causes of dehydration are: vigorous exercise or exercising in hot weather, diarrhoea, vomiting, fever or excessive sweating. It is very important to replace any fluids that you’ve lost before you get dehydrated.

The symptoms of mild dehydration are:
* thirst
* dry sticky mouth
* sleepiness or tiredness
* decreased urine output
* dry skin
* headache
* constipation
* dizziness

When the colour of the urine is darker, it can be an indication that you’re getting dehydrated.
What to do? Increase the fluid intake! Pay attention when the hot weather comes that you need to drink enough water throughout the day. When you exercise, always drink water to replenish the fluids you lose by sweating.

It’s worth mentioning that sometimes water retention can be an indication that you’re not drinking enough fluids. When you drink less water than what you put out, your body is trying to balance it by retaining some water to prevent dehydration. When you experience mild dehydration what you need to do is start drinking more water slowly to replenish the lost fluids.

This is not the only cause of water retention though. It could be just as simple as having too much salt, spices or sugar in your diet.

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A calorie is NOT a calorie – Part 1

I would like to talk about the calories here, because a lot of people think that all calories are equal.
For example let’s look at the difference between glucose and fructose. They’re both simple sugars and they both have the same amount of calories, but glucose can be metabolised by all the body’s tissues, while fructose can only be metabolised by the liver.
Fructose can be found in fruits and vegetables, but it is also manufactured in a lab.
Glucose is also called grape sugar or blood sugar and can be found in all major carbohydrates like starch or table sugar. They are both good sources of energy but excess glucose can be fatal to diabetic patients and excess fructose can lead to insulin resistance or non alcoholic liver disease.
Most fat gained from excessive glucose is subcutaneous (under the skin) and is not linked to diabetes or heart disease.
Fructose leads to higher ghrelin levels than glucose. Why it is important you may ask? Because ghrelin is the hormone that’s responsible for your hunger. Glucose decreases food intake.
High fructose sweeteners, soft drinks and corn syrup cause a rise in obesity. High fructose diet (too much sweeteners) promotes insulin intolerance which will cause abdominal fat gain and increased triglyceride.
So a calorie is NOT a calorie here, there’s a difference.

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About fat loss and supplements

Let me spare some thoughts on weight loss and supplements. I’ve heard this several times: I want to lose weight,I can’t take supplements. It depends on what supplements we are talking about. Whey protein? Well I believe that you can get away with not taking whey protein. If your main goal is to lose bodyfat then I would say try and stick to real, clean food. Why? Because the main aim of any whey protein is to get digested and absorbed quickly and easily. You see where I’m going with this? If it is easily digested then the body don’t need to put effort into digesting it = it won’t use much energy (calories) to digest it. However when you eat clean food – ie chicken, tuna, turkey etc – your body will burn more energy by just simply digesting the food. So I would say if you need to lose a lot of weight you can stay away from whey protein. Where will you get your protein from you may ask? First of all from your food – that should be the main source. Clean food: eggs, chicken, tuna, fish, red meat, turkey etc The second most important source should be amino acids.
Amino acids are the building blocks for protein. There are 20-22 standard amino acids, 8-10 of which are considered essential. That means you need to supplement these because your body cannot synthesize them. There are around 14 non-essential amino acids and a lot of other metabolites that are derived from these 8 essential amino acids.
Amino acids can be used for energy. When they’re used for energy, they cannot be used for building tissue and performing their other metabolic functions. Ladies, you don’t need to put on too much muscle, but you still need to understand that the more muscles you have the higher your metabolism is, which means you burn more energy even when resting. So some muscles will not only look good on you but will increase your metabolism which also means you will need to eat more, too. Quite handy, isn’t it?
During starvation the body releases amino acids from muscle issue to be used for energy. This also occurs during exercise and when the body runs out of carbs fuel from the diet or from glycogen stored in the muscles and liver. Unless proteins are present in the diet aminos are released, even if the body has fat for fuel.
BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) are used by muscles to supply a limited amount of energy during strenuous exercise. These are isoleucine, valine and leucine. Leucine is depleted the most frequently. Trained person’s muscles use up some amounts of leucine even at rest. Complete proteins are proteins that contain the essential amino acids in amounts that are sufficient for maintenance. Incomplete proteins are usually deficient in one or more of the essential amino acids.
So my advice: regardless of your aim in training (losing weight or putting on muscle) supplementing with amino acids and BCAAs is essential.

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About the different diets: Keto, Atkins and Paleo

Women in the locker room constantly keep asking me for diet tips, telling me what they do and what they heard they should do. They’re doing different diets, mostly fad diets. I believe that once you change your lifestyle and eating habits for the better and you start seeing results, you will never look back. However unfortunately many women seem to think that they can have a ‘quick fix’ to lose some weight by a crash diet and then go back to ‘normal’ which unfortunately causes all the weight and fat to come back, too.
In the following few days I will sum up some of the most popular diets, which could be a basis of how you change your eating habits.

The Ketogenic (keto) diet:

This diet is high in fats, low in carbs and moderate in protein. This diet causes the body’s metabolism to shift from glucose to fat utilisation. Ketones are produced by the liver. This diet can improve several health conditions, like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and even cancer because healthy cells can use fats for energy, however cancer cells cannot so they starve to death. When you eat high carb foods your body produces glucose and insulin. Insulin is responsible to down regulate the glucose levels in the blood stream. Insulin is also responsible for storing fat in the body. If you produce too much insulin, you put on weight – simple.
There are different types of keto diets:

  • standard keto diet: you eat 20-50 gr of net carbs / day This is the same as the induction phase of Atkins diet.
  • Targeted keto diet: you eat carbs 30-60 mins before exercise. This is an old approach however you can give it a go because not everyone is the same and what works for one might not work for others and vice versa. But just for the records: you don’t need carbs before your workout.
  • Targeted keto diet alternative with no extra carbs: the idea of this approach is that your body may not need extra carbs before exercise to perform well. Again, you need to try this approach to see how you feel on it.
  • Cycling keto diet: what many bodybuilders use. You alternate keto dieting with high carb days – effectively you do carb loading. Use about 50 gr of carbs on the keto days and 300-600 gr on the high days – obviously depending on your needs and bodytypes. This is only for professional and high performing athletes, not for people wanting to lose a bit of weight.

 The Atkins diet:

The idea is that when you cut back on carbs your body turns to your fat stores for fuel. The result is that you burn body fat and your body releases a by-product called ketones that your body will use for energy.

This diet starts off as a keto diet in the induction phase. You drastically reduce your carb intake down to 20 gr, you cut out pasta, bread, potato or any starchy carb and dairy, and you only eat certain vegetables (fibres). No alcohol, no caffeine, no nuts, seeds or legumes.

After this comes the ‘ongoing weight loss’ phase when you add back slowly more vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, berries and other fruits and eventually wholegrains.

Then comes the phase when you might be able to add more carbs and foods back into your diet depending on your body’s needs.

Because of the food limitations in this diet, especially at the beginning, you will need to supplement vitamins especially potassium, magnesium and calcium.

The paleo diet:

This diet is based on our ancestors’ diets. Back in the days humans were hunters/gatherers. Then became farmers. So instead of loading up on meat, vegetables and seasonable fruits, we eat bread, pasta and grains. Back in the days grains were not part of our diet. Grains are composed of carbs and turned into glucose to be used for energy. Any glucose that isn’t used for energy will turn to fat. Our modern diet is full with refined food, trans fat and sugar which leads to diseases like: obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s etc. There is a big difference between the fat content and quality of our modern grain fed animals vs grass fed wild animals. Wild meat is remarkably lean, and has relatively low amounts of saturated fats, while supplying significant amount of beneficial Omega-3 fats.

The foods that are OK to eat on a paleo diet are:

  • Grass fed lean meat, fowl (chicken, turkey, hen, duck, anything with wings), wild fish (not farmed fish), eggs, vegetables (not deep fried), oils (olive, coconut, avocado), fruits, nuts and seeds, tubers (sweet potato, yams)

If you stick to the foods you are allowed to eat on this diet you should not get fat because these foods are very nutrient densed foods so it’s almost impossible to overeat.

The foods that you need to avoid on a paleo diet are:

  • Dairy, grains, processed food & sugar, legumes, starches, alcohol

 The health benefits of paleo:

  • more efficient workouts,
  • stable blood sugar,
  • burn off stored fat,
  • reduce allergies,
  • balanced energy throughout the day,
  • anti-inflammatory,
  • better skin and teeth,
  • improved sleep patterns

Talking about fats in a nutshell

Fats give you energy and they have 9 kcal in each gram. Fats are a very important part of the diet because they help in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). Fats are either saturated or unsaturated.

  • Saturated fats is solid at room temperature. It is mostly found in animal foods (milk, cheese and meat). Poultry and fish have less in them. Foods made with butter or margarine have a lot of saturated fat.
  • Unsaturated fat is liquid at room temperature. It is mostly in oils from plants. The types of unsaturated fats are:

Monounsaturated fat: you can find it in avocado, nuts and vegetable oils. These fats may help lower your ‘bad’ cholesterol and they also keep your ‘good’ cholesterol levels high.

Polyunsaturated fats: mainly in vegetable oils such as safflower oil, sunflower, seasame, soybean. It is also the main fat in seafood. The 2 types of polyunsaturated fats are Omega-3 and Omega-6.
The fat you need to avoid however is the trans fat. This fat has been changed by ‘hydrogenation’. It is also called on labels ‘hydrogenated fat’. This process increases the shelf life of fat and makes the fat harder at room temperature. Trans fat can raise your cholesterol. You will find it in:*processed foods,

*snack foods (chips),
*cookies (yes!),
*some margarine and salad dressings.

I am available for personalized nutrition and training plans. Please contact me for details or read my Services.