How Strength Training Can Improve Glucose Metabolism

How Strength Training Can Improve Glucose Metabolism, and Why You Should Care

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It sounds like a nightmare from high school biology class.  But, Glucose Metabolism is something you need to understand.  Knowing the risks associated with this internal process can help you prevent disease and obesity.  Knowing how to use it to your benefit, can help you sculpt a lean body and destroy excess body fat.  Interested?  Here’s how strength training can improve glucose metabolism and help you transform your body.

 

What is Glucose

Glucose is a form of sugar your body extracts from the foods you eat, especially carbohydrates.  Commonly referred to as “blood sugar,” glucose is used for energy after it enters your bloodstream.  It’s a necessity for your body to function correctly in a variety of ways.

 

What is Glucose Metabolism

As glucose enters your bloodstream, a combination of hormones helps your body store glucose as glycogen in your liver and muscles.  The most notable of these hormones is Insulin.  Stored glycogen is then converted to energy when your body needs it for physical activity, cell repair, and normal bodily functions.  The entire process of converting glucose to energy is called Glucose Metabolism.

 

Risks of Excess Glucose

When you’re active, your body uses stored glucose for fuel.  You reserve very little as your body uses what it needs for activity, energy and muscle repair.

However, when you’re inactive, or you frequently overeat (especially carbs and processed sugars), glucose floods your bloodstream.  You can only store so much glucose as glycogen in your liver and muscles.  So, what happens to the glucose that your liver and muscles can’t hold?  Your body stores excess glucose, along with any other excess calories, as FAT.

And if you don’t know the risks of excess body fat, read this.

Even worse, when you flood your body with glucose and continuously elevate your blood sugar, insulin loses its effectiveness.  You have a harder time converting glucose to energy, and your body creates more fat to handle the overload.  You also run the risk of developing Type II Diabetes, which can lead to a world of health issues including skin disorders, vision complications, nerve damage and stroke.

But all is not lost…

 

Obesity, Type II Diabetes and Cardio

If you’re overweight or suffering from Type II diabetes, your first course of action will likely be to increase your daily cardio, under the supervision of a doctor of course.  Cardio activities like walking, jogging, swimming, biking, and running are some of the best ways to reduce excess fat and improve blood sugar balance.

This is especially true if you’re not accustomed to working out or are untrained from a fitness perspective.  While your exercise plan will be specific to your fitness level, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends working up to 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity each day.  As you exercise, your body consumes glucose and glycogen, which reduces the amount of excess sugar and fat in your body.

If you’re looking to get more impact out of each workout, you can up the intensity as you progress.  High-intensity interval training (HIIT) like hill sprints, incline running, and other interval workouts increase the amount of energy you expend in a shorter amount of time as compared to steady-state cardio.   As an added benefit, intense training can improve your strength, power, and lean muscle mass.

 

Role of Strength Training in Improving Glucose Metabolism

When you lift weights and use resistance training regularly, you build stronger muscle tissue.  As you break muscle down during your workout, your body repairs your muscle fibers and makes them stronger than they were before.  All this repair takes energy.  Even better, just maintaining lean muscle takes energy throughout the day.  The more lean muscle you have, the more fuel your body needs each day to support it.

The more muscle you build, the less excess energy your body needs to store as fat.

As with cardio, your body can use glucose and glycogen as an immediate energy source, as opposed to a source of excess body fat.

 

Why You Should Care about Glucose Metabolism

So, why should you care?  I guess you can see by now the importance of cardio, resistance training and their impact on glucose metabolism:

  • Simply put, glucose is energy
  • Your body needs that energy for a variety of functions, including cardio, regular activity and maintaining muscle tissue
  • Excess glucose is stored as fat and can lead to obesity and diseases such as Type II Diabetes
  • The more active you are, and the greater amount of lean muscle tissue you have, the more energy your body consumes each day.

Less fat, less disease, and a lean body…  Those sound like some pretty good reasons to me.

Risks of having excess body fat

The Frightening Risks of Having Excess Body Fat

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Working out is hard.  Exercise makes you sweaty, sore and smelly. It takes your time and commitment to see results.  So, why do it?  Why not sit back, get fat and be happy and lazy for the rest of your life?  A little extra weight can’t be that bad, can it?  Or can it?  Here’s the real risks of having excess body fat you’re carrying around.

Being overweight isn’t fun.  You don’t feel great or enjoy the way you look.  Clothes don’t fit, and you shy away from any occasion where you have to show a little skin.

Of course, you already know that.

But did you know, you pay a higher price than just cosmetic costs for that excess body fat?

Here are five ways excess body fat ruins your health:

 

Extra Fat Puts Stress on Your Joints

Your body can only handle a certain amount of weight.  When you carry excessive amounts of body fat and not enough muscle, all that extra stress falls on your joints.  Mainly, on your hips and knees.  It’s like trying to prop up a car with a tv stand… Sooner or later, something is going to give.  Your back also feels the pressure.  If you’ve ever been overweight, I’m sure you know the aches and pains I’m referring to.  It can make life miserable, and complicate the simplest of daily tasks.

 

Your Heart Works Overtime

Your heart feels it when you’re overweight.  The usual offenders are high cholesterol, clogged arteries, and increase in blood pressure.  But here’s a shocking fact you may not know.  You need an extra mile of blood vessels to support just one pound of extra body fat according to the Obesity Action Coalition and a study conducted by Harvard Professor Judah Folkman.  Think about all the additional work your heart has to do if you’re 20, 40 or 100 pounds heavier than you should be…

 

Obesity Increases Your Risk of Disease

Let’s be direct.  If you’re overweight or obese, you’re at an increased risk of:

  • High blood pressure
  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Heart Disease
  • Stroke
  • Some Cancers

These risks are according to a report from the Center for Disease Control on the health effects of obesity.  And that’s not even the whole list.  Life itself is all the reason you need to shred all that excess body fat.

 

Excess Body Fat Impacts Your Sleep

Obesity and excess body fat can lead to poor sleep due to body aches and discomfort.  But, there are also more severe effects.  According to the same report from the CDC, being overweight can lead to an increased risk of sleep apnea and difficulty breathing.  That’s some pretty serious stuff when you start talking about not breathing in your sleep.  At a minimum, you’re not sleeping well.  And when you don’t sleep, you don’t feel like exercising and you tend to eat more.  It’s a hellacious cycle.

 

Mental Health

The impact of excess body fat can go beyond physical issues.  Carrying around extra body fat can impact your mental health as well.  According to the American Psychological Association, obesity and depression are often linked.   Which one causes the other is unclear, but the two usually come hand-in-hand.  At a basic level, when you’re overweight, you aren’t happy about your image.  You’re more likely to have low self-esteem and a lack of body satisfaction.  You may also use eating as a coping mechanism for a variety of feelings, including stress and feelings of sadness.

 

And Those are the Real Risks of Excess Body Fat

So, if you think that all the sweat, time and effort it takes to torch your excess body fat isn’t worth it… it’s time to take another look.  Carrying around excess weight is much riskier than a bad shopping experience.  Clear out at least 30 minutes each day so you can avoid the horrifying risks of being overweight.

Can Exercising Regularly Actually Help Your Career

Can Exercising Regularly Actually Help Your Career?

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Starting a fitness routine has some amazing benefits.  If you workout consistently, you can shred fat, lose weight, prevent injury, improve strength and reshape your body.  But, can exercising regularly actually help your career?

The amazing answer is yes, it can. Here’s how:

 

Improving Your Fitness Reduces Stress

If you’ve spent more than a minute at a job, you know stress is part of your routine.  Unless you’re one of the lucky few, you have meetings, deadlines, commutes and hefty workloads that plague your day.  All that stress can lead to poor work performance, illness, burnout, and turnover.  That’s bad news for your boss and your career.

Fitness can help.  According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, regular exercise can counteract the negative impact of stress, as well as release endorphins in your brain to make you feel peaceful and relaxed.  Working out can also reduce tension and stabilize your mood.  The result, you’re able to perform better at work and cope with stress more effectively each day.

 

A Fitness Routine Improves Your Goal Setting Skills

Finding success with a fitness routine comes down to setting and achieving goals.  When you set S.M.A.R.T. goals, (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely), you improve your chances of staying motivated and improving your fitness.

This positive impact of goal setting works just as well in the workplace.  As in fitness, goal setting helps you stay focused, motivated and on track in the office.  Setting small goals helps you to break up larger tasks into smaller components.  As you meet each benchmark along the way, you get closer to obtaining your ultimate goal.  You become more efficient and effective at your job.  Your company could save a lot of money on training classes and motivational speakers if you applied this one simple principle.

 

When You Exercise Daily, You Sleep Better

You know how your workday goes when you haven’t slept well.  Everything is annoying.  You’ve had three cups of coffee before lunch, but they just aren’t cutting it.  Even small things tend to irritate you.  You have trouble focusing and you don’t do your best work.  All you want to do is go home and crash.

If you aren’t sleeping well, maybe you should exercise more.  A recent article by Sleep.org points out that regular exercise can help you fall asleep more quickly, sleep more soundly and wake up feeling more refreshed.  People who are active also are less likely to develop sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome.  Just think about it.  How much more effective could you be at work if you felt great every day following a solid night’s sleep?

 

Fitness Leads to Greater Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is the belief that you can accomplish tasks.  The feeling that when you apply yourself, you can get results.  In the world of fitness, this feeling comes from working hard and seeing the impact on your health.  If you lack self-efficacy, you feel like you are at the mercy of outside forces, and that nothing you do will make a difference.

For your career, a sense of self-efficacy means that you aren’t scared to take on new challenges.  You gladly volunteer for the next career-changing project, confident that you will succeed.  You’re proactive, and meet challenges head-on.  You become a mover, and people will notice.

 

Improved Fitness Could Lead to a Promotion

Here’s where the big career payoff happens.  All the benefits listed above come together.  You’re positive, energetic, confident and productive.  You handle stress easily and gladly take control of challenging situations.

You’re a superstar, and you’re bound to get noticed.  And when that happens, you get promoted.  More money, more freedom, more control and greater career satisfaction are yours…  And you have your fitness routine to thank.

 

Improve your fitness, launch your career. 

It takes hard work and consistency in the gym and at your office.  But if you stick with your health and fitness routine, it will help you rise to the next level.  As a bonus, you’ll also have more fun and less stress while you’re at it.

Undeniable Proof That You Need Awesome Workout Clothes

Undeniable Proof That You Need Awesome Workout Clothes

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How amazing would it be if you could create more energy and get a better workout, just by putting on a particular outfit?  Imagine increasing your motivation to exercise just by changing what you wear.  Believe it or not, there is undeniable proof that you need awesome workout clothes. 

Picture this.  It’s time to head to the gym, but you aren’t feeling it.  You’re tired.  You’ve had a long day at work, or the kids kept you up late.  In fact, you would rather roll down a hill covered in thorns and fire ants than lift weights or work up a sweat.

And then… something changes. 

You start to feel energized.  You feel powerful and athletic.  You could run through a wall if it wouldn’t result in costly repair bills.  It’s go time, and you feel pumped!

Sound like science fiction…?  Think you need alien technology to summon this kind of energy and motivation?

Well, it’s real, and it can happen just by putting on some awesome workout clothes.

 

The Science Behind Clothing and Fitness Performance

Improving motivation, energy, and performance based on your fitness apparel is a real thing.  It sounds too good to be true, but studies have shown that there are real psychological benefits to putting on specific clothing before you hit the gym.

One such concept is known as Enclothed Cognition.  It’s related to Embodied Cognition, as explained in this Positive Psychology News article about how what you wear can impact your mental state.

Here’s the cliff notes version…  Two psychologists from Northwestern University showed that what you wear, in combination with your experiences, can influence your performance and behavior.  For example, in the study, they showed that test subjects who wore white lab coats performed much better on cognitive tests than subjects who were only wearing street clothes.  The reason this works is that people associate white lab coats with intelligence and attention to detail.

And it doesn’t stop at lab coats.  They proved that once you associate a particular outfit with a mental state, mood or behavior, you can recreate those feelings just by putting on the same clothing.

 

Examples of Clothing Impacting Your Behavior

Think about it…  I bet you have something in your closet right now that you associate with a feeling or mood.

Maybe you have a pair of shoes that make you feel sexy when you put them on.  Or, you have an old baseball cap that makes you feel young every time you wear it.  Perhaps you always crush your sales presentations at work when you wear a specific suit, dress or tie.

And there are more examples all around you:

  • The reserved professional athlete who becomes ultra-competitive when she puts on her equipment
  • The performer who becomes an entirely different person when he gets into costume
  • The singer who changes from shy girl from the Midwest to meteoric superstar when she puts on her outfit for her concert and grabs a mic
  • The quiet chef who creates masterpieces in the kitchen when he puts on his white jacket
  • Clark Kent turning into Superman when he rips off his boring work clothes and shows off his signature leotard…

That last one is a little bit of a stretch, but I think you see what I mean.

So what does that mean for you, and how can you use it to your benefit…?

 

How to Boost Your Workout by Wearing the Right Fitness Apparel

What you wear to the gym can impact your performance, both mentally and physically.

Physically, wearing comfortable, cool and safe clothing will help you enjoy your workout, while also preventing injury and overheating.  Selecting flexible, breathable materials like poly, nylon, cotton, cotton-poly blends, polypropylene, spandex, and tencel will ensure that you are safe, comfortable and free to move.

Mentally, if you’re looking for more motivation, energy, and performance, what you wear makes a difference here as well.

You need clothing that makes you feel strong, energetic and fit.  Clothing that you associate with crushing your workout and feeling invincible.

Do you wear the same clothes to the gym that you wear to the grocery store or for sitting around on the couch?  If so, you’re killing your potential.

Have you been wearing the same old workout clothes for years?  Now, your workout and your outfit are feeling stale?  Time to make a new connection with some fresh workout apparel.

Get some fitness gear that you love.  Put it on, then head to the gym and crush your workout.

Those clothes are now your link to endless motivation and fitness.  Every time you put them on, you psychologically tap into your maximum power and performance.

Make the change today, and see what the right fitness outfit can do for your workout.