Why HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is a Hit in the Fitness World

You may be seeing interval training everywhere. Whether it is actually HIIT style or some other interval training, it’s out there and it’s growing.

Why might you ask?

Interval training has too many proven benefits and reasons to do it, why shouldn’t you?

With interval training, you go from cardio to strength training. You do something that is heart pumping and then a time period of something that lowers that heart rate. With HIIT, it’s exactly as the name says it is. You interval between a very high intensity movement and combine it with periods of either a complete rest with no movement or you do something like light jogging/walking. You can do this in any time frame, from 30 sec each or 60 sec high and then 30 sec low, etc.

The Benefits?

Interval training, especially HIIT training has been proven to promote fat loss, it increases your metabolism and has been known to continue burning and keep your metabolism boosted even up to 48 hours after your training session.You can also get a mega burn and workout in a smaller time than doing a steady workout of any kind. With HIIT, you can burn many more calories and wear yourself out in less than half the time of a normal cardio session. Instead of running at a steady pace for 60 minutes, you can get even more of a workout and more of a burn in about 15-20 minutes. Who wouldn’t choose the latter of the two?

Another great benefit I haven’t even mentioned yet is not plateauing. If you are a runner and run the same speed, same distance and same time each day, your body is going to get used to it. You will plateau. But if you keep your body guessing and it never knows what is coming next, you can’t plateau. Your body will always be surprised, from changing the times and speeds you can do a different workout each time.

What if I am not that fit? I am just a beginner.

HIIT/interval training does not mean you have to sprint at level 12 for 2 minutes at a time. HIIT is meant to be what is high intensity to you. If you haven’t ran in 10 years, you won’t be sprinting at level 12 anytime soon. And that’s fine. If you get a good heart rate intensity at speed 4, choose it. And you don’t have to sprint to get the benefits of interval training, you can change the speeds, the resistance, and incline depending on the cardio machine you are choosing. You can also choose other things besides just running on treadmills for cardio. You can also do the bikes, eliptical, rowers, etc. Interval training isn’t set in stone and you shouldn’t feel pressured to have to do the same workout as anyone else. Everyone has a different fitness level. If you are out of breath and your heart rate has significantly increased, you do not have to go further just because the person next to you can go two more levels above you. Never strain yourself.

 

It’s YOU VERSUS YOU.

 

The 5 Minute Transformation Pics

I keep seeing pictures of ‘amazing’ transformations all over the internet (or even just fit people pictures meant to be motivational), but there is a common problem with a lot of them:

-different posing

-different looking people

-too ‘perfect’ looking

-different editing filters

-different clothing

These factors can pretty much make anyone become a fitness model and major ‘fitspo’ person on Instagram. Before you go starving yourself, buying into the pills/shakes/teas/wraps or whatever else is being advertised with the ‘crazy, fast’ results, be sure you inspect the picture being shown. You can even save it to your computer and proceed to upload it into Google images to do a reverse image search to see if the brand or person using it actually stole it from some poor innocent soul who simply worked hard for their own results.

I am going to show you a few pictures to hopefully help you realize how easy it is to deceive with technology these days and to be careful when you are looking at any fitness/weightloss/transformation pics moving forward.

This is a serious issue. Each of these people sucked it in, changed their position, their hair, or the filter and that was it. But we are all buying into these ‘fake fitspo’s’ and buying into the crap they are advertising.

I feel like these fake pictures are causing even more serious problems with the self esteem issue that is already a concern for so many people, especially females.

Fitspo is for fitsporation. It is to be fitness motivation. It should be motivating to view and see to want you to get healthy, eat right, and go work out. This shouldn’t be a body shaming thing, and yet, it is. Pretty much each of these women above really aren’t fat, they have their problem areas, but everyone does. Yet, to be liked on social media, you need to suck it in, flex, pose, and change the filter to get recognition.

And what about people who do the opposite for getting healthy? The recovering people who lived with eating disorders and starving themselves? There are many out there, looking to put on weight and mass rather than losing. These people have triggers to make them want to go back to restriction, and how does this make them feel?

There are even so many ‘fitspo’ pictures going around that have been so horribly edited and modified that the fitness model (who looked fantastic prior to the editing might I add) just looks like a Barbie. Boobs and butt are made to be huge, abs are made to be chiseled, and so on. What is so wrong with the imperfections that even make us human? If health and fitness isn’t all about looks, why has this fitness world on the internet taken the turn towards looks? If you aren’t looking like you are about to take the stage for a fitness competition, you pretty much get the boot. And sometimes, even if you do look that good, you will still get the photoshop done to your picture.

Fitspo is mean to be inspiring. It should be of average people most people can relate to making real changes. It shouldn’t be only of skinny people with a quote plastered on to the side of it. And it shouldn’t be so sexual like it is now. Big boobs and a bubble butt mean nothing in the definition of ‘healthy’. When did health and fitness become so sexualized? Oh right, everything has to end up becoming sexual eventual in this day and time I suppose. But really, can we not with the boob jobs and implants and calling it ‘fitspo’.

Show me a real girl or guy lifting some heavy weights, or running a marathon. That’s real fitspo. Or show me a person overcoming a terrible disease/tragedy/disorder/disability.

Here’s to no more fakes. No more filters. No more lies. No more editing. No more boobs. No more butts.

Quick Tips

I am working on a plan for someone, as well as my eBook’s that I have going on. While I am working on these things, here are a few tips and suggestions I have in both the eBook as well as workout plans. This is for those doing heavy lifting and following the IIFYM lifestyle that I firmly believe in. You may benefit from this as well! Plus this gives you a taste for how I do my writings/plans/ebooks! Enjoy and happy lifting/eating/living!

 

 

For every exercise, increase weight for each set. You should struggle on the last rep. If not, increase your weight and go again. You should be fatigued at the end of each set of each exercise (excluding the warm up set)

Always stretch after your workout. You should stretch after your muscles are used and blood has pumped and heart has elevated. Otherwise, you are more prone to injuries and tearing/straying a muscle. Stretch after the workout to prevent soreness and prevent injuries from the workout you just completed. More flexibility=more range of motion=less injuries and strains.

On days with cardio, you should do HIIT cardio. You will choose the style of cardio you wish to do and complete 15 to 20 rounds of intervals, doing 30 seconds of all out sprinting (going as hard and fast as you possibly can) and then 30 seconds of walking/resting (going very light). HIIT style burns more fat, boosts the metabolism and has longer lasting effects even after the gym versus standard cardio. It also keeps your body guessing to prevent plateaus after some time of working out.

Consume BCAAs/glutamine and your protein ASAP. Protein can be in shake form, bar form, or whole foods (chicken, tuna, etc.). Also have carbs and sugars (I love greek yogurt with fruit, PB & J on either a rice cake or flat bread/english muffin, etc).

KEEP UP WITH MACROS. DO NOT ADD IN YOUR WORKOUT/CALORIES BURNED. On MyFitness Pal, you can put in your workout and it’ll subtract that calorie burn from your total calories for the day. Please do not factor in the workout. The calorie goal for the day for you has been set, even with workouts. If you are to consume 2500 calories, consume 2500 calories on rest days, AND workout days. Even if you burn 800 calories, you will not eat 3300 calories to make up for the gym. It defeats the purpose of your plan.

Try to plan your day, but you do not have to do it a week or even 24 hours ahead of time. But with IIFYM, it’s best to go ahead and juggle your macros and what you can play with according to cravings ahead of time to ensure you eat more protein/less fat/more carbs etc. I start by eating my breakfast (whatever I want that morning) and input it. I then try to balance my day after. Breakfast is where I really go all out usually. If I know I want to incorporate 2 Oreo’s after dinner, I input it and figure out where I can make up more protein. You can delete what you enter into the app easily to play around with what you can do before you go messing your macros up.

IF YOU CRAVE SOMETHING, PLEASE EAT IT. If you have craved Cheetos for 2 days straight, you are better off just eating a handful of Cheetos (or a small bag) and getting it over with rather than letting your cravings build up and then binging on 8000 calories of bad foods. That 300 calories Cheeto bag is much better than the 8000 calorie binge (plus the guilt during/after and feeling beyond fluffy for a week). If you are craving something terribly, please consume it, even if it doesn’t fit your macros. It will save you in the long run.

 

Reverse Dieting-Why it Works

It’s common to think ‘oh I should just quit eating and I will lose weight’. That’s what we are taught even at a young age and grown up to know. If you want to lose weight, you eat like a rabbit and drop weight at the snap of a finger. But is it really all that simple? Are our bodies that easy to handle? And is this good for our bodies?

We are built and made to eat. And not just pecking at lettuce. Carbs are meant to be our fuel and we are to get nutrients from produce. The food that comes from the earth-not a factory or a box-is great for us, with so many benefits and vitamins to help our bodies function. And we think if we stop eating completely, this is a healthy way to lose weight.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THIS WAS BOGUS.

We are meant to eat, often and abundantly. Your body even tells you when it’s hungry and when it is not. Listen to it. If you are starving, you better eat more than a cube of cheese (cough cough, any Devil Wears Prada fans).

 

I laugh everytime I think of this girl. But as I laugh, I know there are so many people out there who really do live and think like this. Do you know what is really happening? The body is holding on to what little food it does get, and storing it as fat and eating away at muscle and all sorts of terrible things. This isn’t what we are meant to live like. This is not the answer to losing weight.

If you are hungry, you should probably eat. And not just some lettuce. Try a protein bar. Try a rice cake and peanut butter. Have an apple AND a banana. A cube of cheese is not going to feed you, and the fact that this girl binges on rolls in the hospital after getting hit with a car kind of proves that this starvation diet will eventually in a carb overload-sooner or later. Because your body and your mind craves, no needs, carbs. It’s our fuel. Everything has carbs in it. It’s our gas to our engine. It makes us run. It keeps us going. Even your brain feeds off of carbs to work properly. By not feeding your body, you are do much more damage than good.

If you have been living like this and believing the starving diets are the only way to ‘skinny’, you not only will need to rethink everything, but you will have to literally reverse the damage you have done. You will need to slowly increase your calories, slowly incorporate more food and more substance to your diet. Stop spending 2 hours on the treadmill a day. You have to change your whole ways, but once you have, you will actually start seeing results-you will eat more and actually lose weight. You will be able to eat more and see changes because your metabolism will be working the way it should.

1200 calories a day is not meant for a person who is active, it’s hardly enough for a person who just lays around all day, so why is this a number we see too often as a ‘daily goal’ all over the place? Because someone who did not do their own research, someone who does not care about their own health nor the health of the other people they are influencing, someone who simply picked a number at random and thought it was a good idea. Quit with the 1000 or 1200 calories a day. If you go under 1500, you are probably not seeing results if you are wanting to actually have muscle and not simply be ‘skinny fat’.

1500 calories a day. That’s still not that much. I eat 2000 a day, I work out almost every single day of the week if you include the fact that I work at two gyms (an adult gym and also as a cheerleading coach). I lift weights five or more days a week. I hardly every do cardio (2-3 days a week maybe, and it’s HITT only for 15-20 minutes at a time). I eat what I want. I mainly want good foods, so I eat them. I eat when I am hungry. I stop when I am full. I even eat Reeses Oreos occasionally, as well homemade peanut butter cups (pretty much I have lots of peanut butter daily). Once you feed your body and get your metabolism doing what it is actually supposed to do, you no longer have to be so strict with what you eat (unless you are on contest prep or something).

So please, for the love of everything delicious, stop with the 1000 calorie days and start healing-and nurturing-your body.

 

-a