To lose weight
YOUR TEST
Hop onto the scales first thing in the morning, repeat on a daily basis and track your results.
YOUR RESULTS
‘There’s no optimal weight for everybody,’ says Dr Gary Foster, Weight Watchers’ chief scientific officer. Chasing an idealised number – what you weighed when you finished school or before you had kids – is more likely to end in frustration than success. The rate at which you burn calories slows down as you age – this process can begin as early as your twenties and it accelerates as the years go by. Also, if you are less physically active, but still eating the same amount, you lose muscle mass and are likely to put on weight. Muscle cells need more energy than fat cells, so the cycle continues, unless you take steps.
If you’re not happy with how your clothes fit or if you are finding that you do not have the energy you used to, start with the goal of losing five per cent of your current body weight. ‘That’s been proven to confer significant medical, psychological and quality-of-life benefits, and it’s achievable for most people,’ says Foster.
YOUR MISSION
Although it’s true that logging miles at any pace will help you shed pounds, doing those miles at all kinds of different paces is the best weight-loss strategy: ‘A mix of various exercise intensities is the most effective for weight loss,’ says Fitzgerald. Slow, steady runs – which should account for about 80 per cent of your weekly miles – will help develop your fat-burning aerobic system and build up your bones, joints and muscles so you can run harder without getting injured. The other 20 per cent of your training volume should include a variety of other paces: a few miles at comfortably hard ‘tempo’ pace, track intervals at 5K or 10K pace and/or short uphill sprints at a hard effort. Such workouts burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time, says exercise physiologist Dr Steve Ball. ‘The higher intensity also produces a higher afterburn effect, so you’ll burn some extra calories after the exercise session,’ he says. Another benefit of running at different paces is that you won’t become bored by running the same old route at the same old pace, week in, week out.
Of course, the scales still may not budge if you don’t lay off foods and drinks that are high in calories but low in nutrition. ‘Unused glucose gets stored as fat,’ says author and coach Phil Maffetone. So, to ditch flab, try to limit the quantities of refined carbohydrates you eat (including added sugars), and prioritise high-fibre fruits, veggies and whole grains.
Once you’ve lost five per cent of your weight, it’s time to reevaluate: ‘Are you ready to lose more and what do you expect to get from that?’ asks Foster. Continue to monitor yourself: in recent research, study participants who adhered closely to a daily weigh-in protocol lost more weight and kept it off better than those who studiously avoided the scales.
YOUR TEST
Watch your waistband ( beltline) while you run on a treadmill facing a mirror.
YOUR RESULTS
If your hips remain level while you run, congrats – your glutes are facilitating a strong, balanced stride and you’re more likely to avoid injury. But a waistband that dips to one side or the other indicates weak or disengaged gluteal muscles, the culprit behind a host of running injuries, says Heather Milton, a clinical exercise physiologist at New York University’s Langone’s Sports Performance Center. Although some hip drop is expected in healthy runners, it’s not going to be discernible to the naked eye. ‘If you can see a significant drop without measuring it,’ says Milton, ‘it probably is outside of the norm.’
YOUR MISSION
Invite your glutes to the running party – and don’t take ‘we simply can’t make it’ for an answer. But if you think that means doing an infinite number of squats and lunges, think again: developing strong glutes doesn’t necessarily make you less injury-prone, says Milton. That’s because even powerhouse glutes sometimes remain disengaged. Therefore, Milton says, ‘It’s very important that runners re-educate those muscles so they can access their gluteal strength.’
Use the waistband test as training: once a week, run on a treadmill while trying to keep your hips level. ‘That has been shown to improve glute activation,’ says Milton, who also recommends developing muscle engagement and strength with a weekly hill session. Find a hill that takes you 30 seconds to climb, and use it to log 10-15 minutes of hard-effort repeats: sprint uphill using short, glute-recruiting strides – think about pushing the ground away behind you with each push-off – then walk or jog downhill to fully recover. ‘You’ll start to feel changes in strength and neuromuscular education in just four to eight weeks,’ says Milton.