There is a great deal of misinformation around the topic of what time of day that you eat. Eating more than you need at any time of day is not good for you and will lead to weight gain. Fortunately, the truth is, your stomach doesn’t know what time of day it is and so the time of day you eat, is not the critical factor in weight management. The total amount of calories in and calories out is the critical factor and the nutrient quality of the food you eat is vital as well, but let’s talk about this eating at night thing.

The myth supporting ‘eating at night makes you fat’ is based around the assumption that any food left in your stomach when you fall asleep will instantly turn to fat because your body goes into hibernation state. That’s a very extreme assumption about the human metabolism and one based on a lack of understanding. It is true that your metabolic needs drop slightly while you sleep. But your body is an amazingly complex machine that does not operate via an ON / OFF switch. These types of theories assume an ‘all or nothing’ mentality when that’s just simply not the case.

Your digestive system is incredibly complex and is quite capable of digesting food throughout the night. The problem lies in the amount of food you consume at night as a portion of your daily intake. But this is to do with the energy balance (calories in, calories out), not the time of day. If you take in more than your body burns, you will store excess calories as fat (and that goes for carbohydrates, proteins and fats!).

Too much in, not enough out = fat storage. Simple.

Eating at night often has a social element to it and that’s where the danger lies. Think about it. You sit down to a lovely meal with your family, enjoy great conversation and talk about your day. You retire to the couch where you grab a nice glass or sav blanc or an icy cold beer (or 2…. or 5!). You then dish out that apple pie you saw at the bakery that looked delicious and you just had to buy. It looks a bit dry on its own so you pile on a few scoops of ice-cream or custard. On comes your favourite movie so you put your feet up. A couple more glasses of wine or a few more stubbies…. Around 10.30pm you’re still not ready for bed but you’re a bit peckish so out comes the cheese and biscuits, maybe the dip. Oh and you just remembered there’s a block of your favourite chocolate on the top shelf…

Sound familiar?

Let’s have a look at all that food consumed after 6pm….

Here’s a ball park:

Dinner – 500 calories

Alcohol – 300 calories

Dessert – 500 calories

More alcohol – 300 calories

Cheese and biscuits and dip – 600 calories

Chocolate – 500 calories

Total calories consumed after 6pm – 2700!!!

Given that you’ve most likely eaten close to 2000-2500 calories earlier in the day, that’s a whopping 4500-5000 calories for the entire day.

Diabetes anyone?

The average caloric needs for a 70kg woman is in the ballpark of about 2000 per day and around 2600 for men. If the description above sounds like a typical Friday or Saturday night for you, you’ve just consumed over twice the calories your body needs.

It won’t matter what time of day you consume that amount of extra calories, that excess is going to your butt!

Lesson for today – Let’s focus less on the time of day and focus more on the amount of food that you shovel into your mouth…. PERIOD. And don’t forget, nutrient rich, real food first. Treats afterwards (in moderation).

Eat healthy!

Interval training is a fantastic, very efficient way of training to achieve cardiovascular fitness as well as improvements in speed and strength.

Interval training refers to a method whereby you work very hard for a short period followed by a short period of rest and this is repeated over and over. This type of training is very efficient in producing results as it allows you to train at a higher intensity on average over the whole session than would otherwise be possible.

During the phase where you are working very hard, the aim is to work to a level which is only sustainable for a short period. In doing this, you force your body to work harder than it usually would and your heart rate would increase to be higher level than achievable in a longer sustained effort.

The rest phase is designed to allow you to rest just long enough to allow you to keep going through the entire session, but not long enough to allow your heart rate to drop too much. Essentially the end result is a full session where your average heart rate is kept above what you would be able to keep it at if you were trying to train at the same intensity the whole time and therefore creating a greater training effect. By maintaining a higher average heart rate, your body is forced to adapt to a greater extent and this leads to greater improvements in cardio fitness.

Interval training has been shown to burn a higher number of calories than endurance training and also increases the body’s anaerobic threshold. This means that your body can withstand the accumulation of lactic acid for longer and to a higher degree.

Lactic acid is the waste product of the body trying to produce energy in the muscles without oxygen. This occurs when a quick, higher intensity effort or a quick burst of energy from 1-3 minutes is required. When the body is working extremely hard, so hard in fact that the muscles demand more oxygen than it can take in, the production of lactic acid essentially slows the body’s capacity for work in an effort to protect the body and allow more oxygen in.

However this process is a bit counterproductive to someone who is trying to gain increases in their fitness but this is where interval training can be beneficial. After a short period of intense effort, the body naturally starts slowing itself down through the build up of lactic acid (that’s the heavy, burning feeling you feel in your muscles) and that’s the perfect time to have a short rest to allow the lactic acid and other metabolites that have built up to be cleared, ready for the next effort. Repeated over and over again, your body learns to deal with the lactic acid more efficiently allowing you to train at a higher level for longer.

An example of an interval session might be something such as this:

Warmup for 10 minutes at a gentle pace.Hard effort at 75-85% of your maximum for 3 minutes then rest for 1 minute.Repeat this 4-8 times depending on your ability and goals.Warm down for 10 minutes at a gentle pace.Ensure you stretch at the end.

Good luck with your training and enjoy your intervals!

Of course you can! For a great deal of people, Fun and Run are oxymorons of the highest degree but they don’t have to be. A fun run event is one of the most exhilarating, rewarding experiences you'll ever be part of. If it’s something you've had an interest in or always wanted to achieve as a goal, I’m here to say you should jump in and have a go.

Here are my top 10 tips for having a go at your first fun run:

Even though the name of the events is generally ‘fun run’, there is never any requirement you have to be able to run to participate. Go ahead and enter and just walk or walk/jog for your first one.This is a good way to be part of it and find out what it’s all about without putting too much pressure on yourself.If you're aiming for your first ever fun run, choose the smallest distance and start from there. Depending on the event, there will usually be a starter event of between 3-5km.Sign up with a friend. One of the best parts of doing a fun run is the support you get from the people doing it with you. If one of those people is a familiar face, it will make it much more enjoyable.Make sure you have the right shoes. If your joggers haven’t seen the light of day for 10 years, it’s time to invest in some new ones. In fact if they are more than about 2 years old, turf them and get some new ones. If you have been wearing them fairly regularly, give them the flick after about 12 months. The lifespan of trainers is far less than most people wear them for. While they may not look or feel terribly worn, the cushioning and supportive structures throughout the shoe do deteriorate with time and regular wear and can cause injury problems if you continue to wear them.Check out the event website beforehand.There is heaps of great information on the event websites to give you a heads up before you get there. You can have a look at the course, find out information about how to get there, parking suggestions (big events can have limited parking due to the number of entries and road closures etc), bag drop areas (there is usually somewhere safe you can leave your bag while you are participating), start times, sponsor information, entertainment, meeting points, first aid stations, drink stations and plenty more.Do some training beforehand. If you can, invest some time, perhaps once or twice per week to do some extra walks or jogs to get you in better shape. Not only will you be able to complete a faster time than if you didn’t train, you will be able to complete the event with greater ease, more comfort and reduce your chance of injury.Have fun! After all, they are called a fun run! There will be prizes for the elite runners but leave the ambitions for medals at home, (for your first event anyway) and just enjoy the experience.Thank the volunteers! There’s a special thrill you get from thanking a volunteer who hands you a drink or points you in the right direction on the course. They do such a brilliant job and they rarely get thanked so they will appreciate the recognition and it will make you feel good too.Smile if you see a camera. You will feel much better looking at a picture of yourself with a big grin on your face than a painful scowl.

Go ahead and leave a comment telling me about your first experience at a fun run. Or if you’ve done your first and been converted, what’s your best advice to help out a first timer?

Good luck!

Delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS as it’s sometimes known is the pain or discomfort you may feel in the 24-48 hours after a hard workout. Sometimes it may last even longer and the degree to which you may suffer will depend on what kind of workout you’ve done and your relative fitness / strength in that area prior to the workout.

First of all, the effect on each person will be different and there may be other factors such as fatigue, muscle tension, injury, technique etc that will have an influence on how badly you suffer DOMS after a workout.

The cause of DOMS is sometimes misunderstood. Despite popular opinion, a build up of lactic acid is not the cause of DOMS.

The delayed pain actually results from the muscle damage that occurs at a microscopic level within the muscle when excess load is placed on the muscle. Now before you panic at the word ‘damage’ and swear off exercise after reading that, rest assured that this is a perfectly normal process that happens every time you workout. This is in fact the way the body gets stronger.

Are there any green thumbs in the room? What do you do to roses to make them thrive? You hack them back about 2/3, right? You cut them down, essentially damaging the structure in order for them to bloom the next season and continue to grow as a healthy plant. Do you know happens after a bush fire? The fire damage actually helps many of the trees and shrubs to regenerate. Many plant species in naturally fire-affected environments require fire to germinate, to establish, or to reproduce, or all three. Without fire (without damage to the plant), these plants would actually be eliminated.

The body works on a similar principle. During a hard workout, particularly following a heavy resistance session, the individual microscopic muscle fibres experience tiny tears, which then over the next 2-7 days, repair naturally, stronger than they were before. As a consequence of being placed under strain, the muscles work out that they better fix themselves a bit stronger than last time to avoid the same thing happening again. It’s like a defense mechanism.

It’s the tiny muscle tears that cause the pain and depending on the degree to which the muscle was damaged, the more it hurts and the longer it lasts. There have been many stdies done to find out what the best solution is for DOMS.

The results of these numerous studies are clear. The best thing you can do is keep the muscle moving with gentle exercise. Go for a walk, do some gardening, do an easy cross training workout (something different to what you would normally do – if you always run, then cross train using some swimming, if you usually swim, cross train with some walking or cycling).

The next solution is massage. Invest in a remedial massage which can target the appropriate muscles, you can even do some self massage or sweet talk your partner into giving you a rub down.

The third thing to do is stretching the sore muscles as often as you can, at least 4 times per day.

The fourth technique to try is hot / cold therapy. This helps encourage increased blood flow through the muscles to promote quicker recovery. Try starting with a warm shower for a minute or two, then turn the taps to as cold as you can bear for 30 seconds, back to hot for 1 minute, cold again for 30 seconds and 1 more minute of hot.

Ideally, the best solution is to do all of the above. The worst solution, proven over and over again, is to do nothing. Avoiding moving for fear of experiencing more pain will make the pain last much longer than staying active and keeping moving gently.

The length of time you will be sore will depend on how bad your DOMS was to start with and how diligent you are with the techniques above.

This is such an easy question to answer. But first of all, I have to say, lets drop the ‘I can't fit exercise in’ excuse. It's not valid. It's a choice. Instead, what you should be saying to be honest with yourself is ‘I choose not to fit exercise in at this point in my life’.

Honesty is always the best policy!

We always choose how we spend our time and when you choose other things over exercise, that's still a choice. Granted, you may be choosing family responsibilities or social functions or rest over exercise and that's fine. But those things are still a choice.

Ok, now onto the answer to the question. There are hundreds of opportunities to fit incidental exercise into every day. It’s amazing how much each little bit adds up. Some of these suggestions may suit your lifestyle, some may not.

Here are 33 suggestions for adding more incidental exercise into your day:

Walk to work instead of drive.Catch public transport more often which force you to walk at least part of the journey.Park at the farthest end of the car park instead of trying to find the closet park.If you are making several stops at the local shopping centre (perhaps supermarket, post office, coffee shop), then do one stop at a time and return to the car inbetween.Take the dog for a walk twice per day instead of once.Offer to walk the neighbour's dog.Grab the neighbour and go for a walk after dinner.Grab a colleague and walk at lunch time.Fly a kite.Help a friend move house.Walk to the post box instead of driving.Get to work 15 minutes early with your trainers and walk before you start in the office.Instead of sending an interoffice memo via email, get up and walk to the persons desk. Bring the shopping in from the car one bag at a time.Carry your shopping bags instead of using a trolley.Lie on the floor and do some abdominal curls while watching TV instead of sitting on the couch.If you have any type of exercise machine collecting dust or being used as a clothes rack dust it off and use it while watching TV instead of sitting on the couch. If you are constrained to a desk or chair, jig your legs! There all sorts of movements you can do with your legs while seated. You can do mini start jumps moving your feet in and out together. Scissor movements switching your legs alternately forward and back along the ground. Marching movements. Stand up and down 5-10 times every ½ an hour. You may look silly but hey who cares. At least you’ll be fitter and healthier!Do squats while you wash the dishes.Do 20 butt clenches at every stop light in the car.Do lunges while you hang the washing on the line.Take the washing from the laundry a few items at a time instead of all together in one basket.Wash the car yourself instead of at a car wash.Do more gardening.Play physical games with the kids.Take the stairs instead of the lift.Take the long way instead of the short cut.Walk instead of using the escalator / travelator.Instead of a swear jar, create a swear exercise corner! 3 burpees for every swear word!Do a squat every time you pass a certain point in your home.Do 10 can cans every time your phone rings.Do 5 pushups for each time you log onto Facebook.

Go for that walk even if you do only have 10 minutes. An extra 10 minutes every day adds up to 70 minutes extra walking every week, over 60 extra hours of exercise per year! That could burn around 18,000 extra calories each year. If you did 10 extra minutes of exercise every day, that equates to a loss of nearly 3 kilograms of body fat every year!!

Look for ways to add incidental exercise into every day. It’s not hard. There are opportunities at every moment. Take the healthy choice instead of the easy choice. Take the long way instead of the short cut. Enjoy being active. Enjoy life!