Tips to Help Your Post-Workout Recovery

April 26, 2021December 5, 2022 JayneLeave a comment

Now that the gyms are open again, millions of Brits have hit the workouts hard, in an attempt to shake off that lockdown weight gain. A lot of people are looking to feel their absolute best, so they are eating better than ever and exercising regularly! In fact, many people are taking supplements to make themselves feel their best, for example, here are some great testosterone boosters to try!

The fact that lockdown has ended just in time for Spring and Summer, when many of us feel the pressure to be slimmer anyway, means that people are exercising harder than ever, and that means injuries are inevitable.

When I started weight training, back in 2017, the exercise itself was fun and fulfilling, but the days of DOMS in my thighs (why is it that walking UP stairs isn’t so bad, but walking DOWN the stairs feels like torture?!) were hellish! With this in mind, I thought I’d share a few tips for making sure you look after your body properly with your post-workout recovery:

Hit The Showers

Having a post-workout shower is important for getting yourself clean, but the water can actually help your muscles too. Alternating between blasts of hot and cold water, known as a contrast shower, can help improve recovery and alleviate muscle soreness. Even better is if you’re lucky enough to have steam showers at your gym, as using steam is like putting a warm blanket over your aching muscles!

Hydrate

Most people remember to take water with them to the gym and to drink while they’re working out, but drinking plenty during your post-workout recovery is super important too. Experts generally agree that, for every 10 to 20 minutes of exercise, you should drink at least 260ml of water, followed by another 230ml no more than half an hour after you’ve stopped to keep your muscles healthy. If you can add some electrolytes to your water, that’s even better.

Stretch

Most people will strecth before they start their workut to help avoid injury, but they don’t always stretch again at the end, which is a common mistake. When you stretch your muscles after a workout, you’re helping to give your body a jump-start on recovery, while also releasing stress and tension, and boosting the flexibility of your joints.

Protein

Whether you’re following a strict diet or not, one of the most important ways to help your body to recover from exercise is to make sure you have plenty of protein. This can come in the form of a protein shake, eggs, steak or even seitan for the vegans – as long as it’s protein-rich, it’s what you need to help your muscles to rebuild and really benefit from all the exercise you’re doing.

Rest…But Still Move!

I know how tempting it is to take the “rest” part of “rest day” a little too literally. You’ve worked out hard all week and come your rest day, you want to remain as sedentary as possible. Believe it or not, failing to do ANYTHING on a rest day can actually do more harm than good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a full-on HIIT routine or anything – a gentle walk, some yoga or even just playing Mario and Sonic at the Olympics on your games console – a bit of movement will prevent your muscles from seizing up, which will make it easier to go back to full activity on your workout days.

My New Keto Lifestyle

February 10, 2017February 10, 2017 Jayne5 Comments

Keto If you follow me on Facebook, Insta or Twitter you may have noticed that lately I’ve been banging on about dieting again, but this time it’s different. You see, I’ve found a way of eating and exercising that I’m truly in love with and I’ve managed to stick to this with more discipline than anything I’ve ever done…and it’s showing results, too!

The first part of my new lifestyle is my eating plan, keto, or a ketogenic diet. The principle is that by restricting carbs and eating a high fat, high protein diet you force your body to access glycogen which is stored as fat, which in turn gives you weight loss and retrains your body about what to burn and what to store. It’s great for type II diabetics and is also what Dr. Michael Mosley is promoting through his “Eight Week Blood Sugar Diet” book (I HIGHLY recommend this as a starting point if you want to learn about keto eating). At the moment, I eat under 20g of carbs a day (just for perspective, one baked potato contains roughly SIXTY grams of carbs, which would be three days worth for me!) and aim for around 100g of protein and 100-120g of fat. Once you realise that fat doesn’t make you fat, it revolutionises what you can eat!

Limiting carbs means that I have to be a lot more creative about cooking (and also means that bacon and eggs feature heavily in my life right now!) but it’s actually been a lot easier than I thought. For instance, I’ll occasionally cook a roast for the family, except I don’t have potatoes or Yorkshires, however a big plate of roasted meat and veg is still a delicious meal and feels like SO much less of a compromise than “diet food”.

Many keto-devotees don’t calorie count if they’re eating it as a lifestyle rather than weight-loss aid, but I’m currently limiting myself to 1300 calories a day because I had a total of 5 stone to shift. However, most people advocate working out what your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is so that you can work out exactly how many calories you need to eat just to exist.

The next part of my lifestyle change is exercise. Before now, exercise has been a dirty, dirty word to me. I’m naturally incredibly lazy, so moving around until my heart pounds has never appealed to me, but I’ve found something I really enjoy and seem to be pretty good at – weight lifting. I’ve always been disproportionately strong for a 5ft 4in woman so turning that into something I can use to improve myself has been a real joy. I’m using the StrongLifts app which gives you a workout-by-workout breakdown of what lifts to do and what weights you should be moving, and I just love it. I’m getting almost as much satisfaction from seeing how much I can lift than I am from seeing how much weight I’m losing. It’s actually an incredible way to burn fat, but before you ask, no, I won’t end up looking like a bodybuilder – it takes RIDICULOUS levels of exercise and protein intake for that kind of physique!

Which brings me onto the money shot of any post about dieting – my weight! When I started in January, I weighed 14st 7lb – not the heaviest I’ve ever been but a full 5 stone heavier than I’d like to be and enough of a shock to make me get my arse into gear. I started in earnest with diet and exercise and after sticking religiously to it (and I mean genunely religiously, I’ve not had a SINGLE cheat meal in this time) I’ve already shifted 15lb, taking me down to 13st 6lb.

I still have a long way to go, but when I think about the fact that I’ve already lost over 20% of what I need to, it really bolsters my enthusiasm. Keto is a lifestyle that I can see myself sticking to for years to come, even when I’m trying to maintain weight rather than lose it and I’m really hopeful that I can reverse my diabetes too. I’ve had a lot of help from Husband, my friend Katy and a couple of Facebook groups I’m in, and I’m still having to think about basically every single meal but I’m hoping in time it will all become second nature (I already feel like I have an encylopaedic knowledge of the carb content of every item in Waitrose!!).

A lovely knock-on effect is that it’s given me so much more energy (I know it’s a massive cliche, but it’s true!) and lifting weights has improved my cardiovascular fitness on almost a stealth level. I decided I needed to get moving more as I’m very sedentary on a daily basis so I re-started the couch-to-5K app that I’ve neglected for about 3 years and I didn’t, to my MASSIVE surprise, die during my first run! Husband has kindly treated me to a pair of proper trail running shoes because pavements don’t really exist where we live, as well as some proper socks, and I’m already feeling enthusiastic about running more. Also, I’m really hoping to join a netball team again once as that’s something I used to love doing.

I feel like I don’t even know myself any more, but that’s such a good thing! I used to dream about the cheat meals I could have when I got to my desired weight but now I just keep thinking about how much weight I’ll be able to lift or the nice clothes I’ll be able to finally fit into.

As a side note, I thought I’d try to keep diet and keto recipe posts to a minumum on here because it might get boring, so I’ve started a dedicated keto lifestyle blog, which you can find at The Keto Life. It’s very sparse at the moment, but I’ll be doing more recipe posts and updates as an when they happen.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or want to get started with keto, leave me a comment or hit me up on social media.

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Health · Weightloss.

Ignoring the Scales (For Now…)

January 19, 2017 Jayne3 Comments

Ignoring the Scales As most of you probably know by now, I’m on YET another weight loss mission having failed about a million times in the past, but I’m doing something a lot more enjoyable and sustainable this time in the hope that I can stick to it. I’m following a low sugar, high fat (ketogenic) diet as it’s been proven to reverse type 2 diabetes, something which is hugely appealing to me. I’ve got a family history of type 2, so theres still a chance I’ll need to be medicated even when I’m down to a healthy weight, but there’s also a good chance that it will reverse altogether.

Willpower is something I’ve struggled with in the past because food is as much of an emotional crutch to me as just simple nutrients but I’m at a point where I’m just so bloody bored of gorging on junk food all the time and the prospect of dying in my sixties (if I’m lucky…) because of a lifetime of greed is enough to make me get off of my arse.

One thing that I’m trying not to do is micro-manage my weight. Every time I’ve ever ‘dieted’ (I put that in inverted commas because I don’t actually see keto as a diet, it’s an eating plan that we should probably all be following on a much more regular basis for optimum health benefits), I tend to get fixated with the scales and weigh myself on a daily basis. This is negative for two reasons – firstly, not all victories happen on the scales. I’ve also started weight lifting, and this usually adds muscle and makes changes to the shape of your body, things which aren’t always positively reflected in terms of “weight”. Secondly, it puts me into a downward spiral of demoralisation.

Today is a prime example. Last week, I made a grand declaration that I wouldn’t be weighing myself until my birthday in mind-June, so that I got to see one big change rather than lots of little ones. However, curiosity after a week of eating well and exercising got the better of me and I stepped onto the scales and happily discovered that I’ve already lost half a stone since New Year’s Day ( YAY ME!). But this is where things go wrong – I weighed myself AGAIN this morning, only for the scales to show I’ve gained two pounds back again.

I can already feel the disappointment weighing heavy on me, even though the logical part of my brain is trying to tell me to chill the f*ck out. This is a marathon, not a sprint. SO many things can play a part in such tiny changes like hormones, water retention, even down to what clothes I’m wearing. But all of the logical explanations aren’t snapping me out of it.

There are various issues that I’ve had when it comes to weight loss, and keeping my head in the game after even the most minor of disappointments is one of the biggest. In the past, if things haven’t gone my way then it’s completely turned my head back around to the “screw it, I may as well binge again” mindset and that’s the demon I’m battling today, but battle it I shall. Instead of letting get the better of me, I’ve had coffee and biltong, I’m drinking water, I’ve taken my supplements and I’m going to the gym before I collect Sausage from school. As long as I stick to that plan and don’t wake up in an hour buried under 800 empty crisp packets, I reckon that’s a win…even if the scales ARE trying to sabotage me. Forgive me for tearing the arse out of the metaphor, but I think this is all about winning the little battles in order to win the overall war against my own laziness and greed.

I think i’ll start weighing myself either weekly or fortnightly – I need a little bit of feedback, just to motivate me and assure me that I’m moving in the right direction, but a six month wait will just be torture!

Tune in next week for “How to deal with toddlers who try to force feed you Quavers when you’re on Keto”. LOL. Not really.