The Optimise Health Blog

Copyright Castle Howard I went to see my friends complete the Castle Howard Triathlon on Sunday morning. When I got the all clear I vowed to myself to complete this challenge to give myself a goal to work towards and prove to myself that I was better. So after 4 months of recuperation after surgery and complications of scar burst, infection and then a lumbar disc prolapse I am starting to plan my year of training to complete the Triathlon. As a sprint distance it involves a 400m swim then a 23km cycle followed by a 5km run.  I have been able to achieve each of these individually in the past, but to achieve a reasonable time and the fitness level to do all three at full pace will require a gradual build up in endurance, a change in my usual diet, fitness activity and a focus on endurance training which may (hopefully) change my body shape and composition in the process! After 4 months of relative inactivity my weight and fat levels are not good so this is the ideal time ...

If you are overweight there are two types of fat you need to lose though two types of regular exercise: - VISCERAL fat - around the internal organs in your abdomen (this is dangerous as it means there is likely to be fatty build up in your arteries causing Atherosclerosis Visceral fat is best lost by aerobic exercise IE getting out of breath - but you need to exercise for more than 20 minutes continuously to kick in the fat burning system and lose visceral fat - exercises like running, cycling, swimming and aerobics would cause this type of fat to be burned up. - SUBCUTANEOUS fat - under the skin, the "spare tyre" type of fat is from overeating and is laid down by the body for storage of excess calories eaten in the diet This type of fat is best lost by doing weight training ie lifting weights in a controlled way regularly which helps the muscles to grow and use up available fat reserves around them in the skin. It is worth including both weight training and aer...

Weigh Yourself Often - 10 Strategies for Successful Weight Loss : 'via Blog this' Ok I know I have just cited mens health mag yesterday. Sometimes they quote research worth repeating and there is a reason why they are the best selling mens magazine in the UK. This article states 10 strategies for successful weight loss - why not pick one and give it a go this week? Dr Ben Sinclair Twitter: @menshealthtips Sinclair Health Limited

Current guidelines suggest that the minimum exercise a man needs to do is 20 minutes a day getting out of puff ie raising the heart rate above 120 bpm. Bear in mind that this is the MINIMUM daily requirement for prevention of cancer and heart disease amongst other preventable diseases. If you want to lose weight you will need get puffed for more than 20 minutes; you will only start to burn fat when you exercise for more than 20 minutes at a time, as the first 20 minutes of any exercise are fuelled by sugar stored in the muscles. The best way cover this daily exercise requirement is to include exercise in your journey to work; then any extra intentional exertion on top is a bonus in terms of weight loss. You may find setting a physical goal or target helpful in achieving motivation - take a look at this recent NHS article: couch to 5k for inspiration of a typical guy doing more exercise. If you dont already exercise then brisk walking is a good start, slowly increasing to ...

What is the thinking behind your size? In Yorkshire men are still praised by women for finishing large portions of food. An XL appetite used to be a prized quality when it meant men were strong and worked the land and could put away two plates of pie and peas with Yorkshire pud; but this traditional attitude doesn't cut the mustard these days. Lets take a step back and look at this objectively. Have you always been overweight, or has this weight gain come as a result of identifiable events or triggers? Do you really want to lose weight? Why? Do you eat too fast? Do you have to finish the plate? Are you known as the big guy or expected to eat and drink more than anyone else? Why? What do you attribute your XL size to? Many men just accept the status quo after they find they cant lose the weight and give up trying. Check out this video from a friend who had some success after realising he was overweight and took definitive action to change his size. Dr Ben Sinclai...

Just to clarify - breakfast IS the most important meal of the day if you are trying to lose weight. If you don't eat and drink first thing your body remains in starvation (hence the word break-fast as you have fasted from food overnight) and you won't be burning more energy but just conserving your reserves as your body slows down and goes into hibernation. "But I just need a black coffee in the morning and I am fine till dinner time with a few snacks" I hear you say. With this work related habit of early rising, not eating and trying to jump start the machine with a coffee kick you are only heading for a slump later that day with associated craving for sugar rich foods around elevensies. If you want to start losing weight, eat breakfast; even if it is a glass of water and a banana. See this post for more on this topic. Tomorrow indulge yourself with a full English breakfast as per the blog. Dr Ben Sinclair Twitter: @menshealthtips Sinclair Heal...

I just became a father to a beautiful girl called Scarlett who is 3 weeks old today. All my advice on keeping weight down has been very much a reality for me in the last 3 weeks as there has been little I could control in my environment and I really wanted to avoid weight gain. In the limbo of hospital I couldn't really exercise, as I spent every day driving to the hospital to see my wife and newborn child in the hope of bringing them home by car. Eventually with little sleep catch up after 48 hours wakefullness through labour, terrible hospital food and fending for myself at home with an empty fridge, we came home. The timetable has been a bit different over the last few days with a 3 hourly feeding program to encourage the little one to gain weight. Our church and friends have been amazing at bringing around food every night for dinner. I have adopted a commando lifestyle, eating whenever food is available as you never know when the next meal will be. I have managed...

You may be reading the blog on your smartphone. Whether you like Apples, Blackberries or Androids they can be good for your health! Your command of technology is the key here. You are in the driving seat. There are many apps that can help you goal set, track and map your road to success. I used the Apple free app iGoalinformer to help monitor my weight and calorie intake. I now use TargetWeight app which is simpler as I am not montoring my calorie intake. I use MAPMYRIDE to track my cycling and adidas MiCoach to track and map my running. If you have a smart phone check out your app store and look for suitable software. Even if you are on a desktop there are plenty of free sites competing for your membership to help achieve your goals. Feel free to post any helpful links in comments below as this is an ever changing marketplace. Dr Ben Sinclair Sinclair Health Limited Twitter: @menshealthtips http://ow.ly/5iykm"Linked In

Do you sleep less than 8 hours a day? Research shows that if you do you are likely to have a shorter lifespan and also more likely to be obese. When we sleep our bodies have a maintenance program that kicks in to get us ready for the day, but if we cut this short the system can go out of whack. Along with eating breakfast to kick start the machine, sleep is required to maintain it. The sleep / wake cycle releases various hormones such as cortisol to prime the body or put it into hibernation for the night. Working night shifts can interfere with this process, hence those who work permanent nights are more likely to die young and be obese. So get more sleep! An average of 8 hours a day is about right. Dr Ben Sinclair Sinclair Health Limited https://www.optimiseclinic.co.uk Twitter: @menshealthtips Linked In: http://ow.ly/5iykm

Steven Covey the author of 7 habits fame suggests that you write down your goals. This way you are far more likely to achieve them. To encourage accountability tell your friends family and work colleagues about your resolve (in brief detail). You are far more likely to achieve your goal of weight loss and all the other asprirations going with it if you write them down. Why not start a journal? Dr Ben Sinclair Sinclair Health Limited https://www.optimiseclinic.co.uk Twitter: @menshealthtips Linked In: http://ow.ly/5iykm

Its tempting to think you need a break from everything at the weekend including your healthy lifestyle plans! I often lose the motivation as I feel I deserve a treat and need to recover from the exertions and stress of the working week. However, when I plan some exercise (sooner in the weekend the better) I feel energised and active again, I tend to eat less, feel calmer and more relaxed and sleep better ready for monday. This weekend plan some fun activity with partner, family or friends - get to the open country, do a new route, plan a day out with keeping active at the heart of it. Go on, you will feel better! Dr Ben Sinclair Sinclair Health Limited https://www.optimiseclinic.co.uk Twitter: @menshealthtips Linked In: http://ow.ly/5iykm

What ingredients are used to make beer? Water, hops and sugar. Alcohol as a chemical is closely related to sugar, so its no surprise that alcohol contains alot of energy in the form of carbohydrates. Alcohol also stimulates hunger so guess what - after a few beers we all need a large kebab! Alcohol is processed through the liver which is the main processing plant in the body for sugar and other vitamins and dietary breakdown products. If you are drinking alot you will usually gain weight and slow down the of other vital processes; when the liver gets damaged through excess alcohol or sugar it lays down fat. The recommended units per week for a man are 21. This means around 10-11 pints of medium strength beer, 21 shots of spirits, or about 2 bottles of wine - but hopefully spread over the week and not all at once! Take a look at your alcohol intake - if you are exercising you will find more stamina if you reduce alcohol. Generally you will lose weight faster if you reduce ...

If you need to strenthen your resolve you need to buddy up. Choose someone you know well enough to talk about your weight and who you are happy to accept a challenge from. Tell them about your aims and get them to keep you accountable through regular communication. If it cuts both ways this is helpful as you are both relying on each other and both able to challenge each other. Share your challanges, barriers to success and your vices! These are the hardest things to overcome but your buddy may be able to see an alternative. In the book Nudge a pact between two stockbrokers is described and seems to work very well as a deterrent to weight gain and a successful tool to weight loss - they both realised early on in their careers that with the hard work and hours they put in it was all too easy to gain weight - so they entered into a pact where either one could call a snap weigh in at any time and if the other was over his desired weight limit he paid £10,000 to the other! Appar...

I love seconds - helpings of dinner that is. I normally fill up on the main course, lots of meat and carbs and veg. I am not really a pudding person because I can't be bothered to make them. When my wife is away I will sometimes just eat large amounts of grilled steak, baked potato and peas. Once I got an offer on fillet steak and ate a pound of it at one sitting straight from the BBQ. In Yorkshire men are praised (mostly by older motherly figures) for finishing mammouth plates of food or chastised gently if they do not finish the plate - it can even be rude not to ask for seconds! So what makes us feel full? Well the body is pretty savvy and it lets the brain know when your stomach is getting stretched to filling point which in turn flips the switch in your brain to "full" The problem is that it takes 20 minutes for the message to be received and understood in the brain - in stone-age caveman circumstances, eating slowly and chewing a lot on tough tiger st...

I was brought up to finish my plate. Like many of the little chef generation I wanted the prized lolly for finishing my dinner. Where did this rule of "finish the plate" come from? I would hazard guess that it comes from my parents who growing up in post-war Britain when rationing was still in force and my father saw his first Banana when he was ten years old. At that stage food was scarce, high energy food was prized, expensive and considered a luxury treat; in fact any tasty food you got was worth eating, while anything else you got was probably just eaten because you were hungry. So if you didn't finish your plate something was seriously wrong or you were at the very least disrespecting the cook and provider of the meal. When I was at Uni we did a nutritional survey using ourselves as the guinea pigs. I found that I was eating 3x the recommended energy requirement per day (even finishing friends leftovers!) for a man of my age and size; at that time I coul...

So you want to lose weight. What is one of the hardest things about this? Being hungry of course. If you're used to eating a large volume of food your body will still crave it when you reduce the portion sizes you are eating; even though you fill up on a pint of water before each meal you will soon feel hungry again. So when you get hungry between your smaller portion meals what do you do? After exercising, drinking more water, distracting yourself (boredom or stress often provokes hunger) you should find a food you can fill up on which won't break the calorie bank. I chose carrots because they are easily available, cheap, tasty ( I like them fresh+raw from the fridge or better the allotment) and they have few calories compared to beer, cake, biscuits, bread, sweets or other things I might reach for. Carrots also have the added bonus of giving you a healthy skin tone which when surveyed makes your skin look more healthy than a tan or fake tan! You can...

Something I always look at with men who want to lose weight is backup planning for situations in which the good intentions fall down. You might have the best diet in the world at home with the support of your partner and family. Your daily routine might be fantastically healthy including cycling to work, eating healthy snacks, 5 a day and drinking plenty of water, going to the gym on the way home and eating a healthy dinner. However when men hit the road this lifestyle plan is sucked out of the window on take-off. Why is travel so hard and how can we rein in this area of our lifestyle? Many of us travel for work, some for leisure. How can we maintain a good lifestyle in this complex challenging and fluid arena? There are so many threats to your usual lifestyle when on the road - your timetable will change, your timezone may alter, your sleep habits may be affected, you need to be productive and alert while travelling, boredom and stress kick in when on the road and guess wh...

Mediterranean diet for heart health - MayoClinic.com Here is more info on a diet that might be right for you - have a read because it is so much more than just eating gallons of olive oil on your salad! Happy Sunday! Dr Ben Sinclair Sinclair Health Limited https://www.optimiseclinic.co.uk Twitter: @menshealthtips Linked In: http://ow.ly/5iykm

Is your bread making you ill? How 2011's loaves are bad for you | Mail Online Everyone tells you to give up carbs. Well we do eat alot of bread in the UK /Western diet - bread and potatoes and pasta are really our staples. Bread has changed over the years and now contains many additives which may not be so good for you. Have a read of the link article above to find out more. My advice? Don't eat too much bread or rely on it as your only source of carbs - eat potatoe, rice, pasta, coucous, oats etc so you vary your diet and in the right proportions shown in the healthy eating plate post below, matched only by the same volume of vegetables and fruit in your daily intake. White bread is especially bad and you'd be surprised how much pure refined sugar actually goes into making it- try making it or look at a recipe. Go for granary or wholemeal with seeds - it contains more fibre and is more nutritious; best of all bake your own at the weekend with a bread make...

So you decide to weigh in. Maybe not in the village hall with all the female weight watchers crowd, but in the privacy of your bathroom. How do you weigh yourself accurately? 10 pence in a machine on the seafront used to give you a few minutes looking at the view with a telescope or a ride on one of those old fashioned weighing machines with a big dial. These days scales are pretty accurate if on a hard surface and can include electronic measure of your body fat and even work out your BMI. Bear in mind fat percentage is calculated by measuring electrical impedance through your skin so if your feet are wet it might get skewed! Also if your upper body is not involved with hand sensors then you are only measuring how much fat you have in your legs and bum! As you may know I am not a big fan of BMI (it tells me I am overweight at BMI 28) as it is not helpful as a measure for individuals or some racial groups or body types as a true measure of what a healthy weight should be. It ...