Lifestyle – Fitness Freak Lifestyle Blog

For many, life is about routine and control. No one likes surprises and there is nothing worse than a curve ball being thrown at you when you least expect it. But life happens and every day we are faced with challenges which sometimes side track us from our normal routine and goals.
My question to you is what is your goal? Don’t get me wrong, but I am not talking about being rich, or an event such as a marathon. I am talking about something way bigger.

I travel a fair amount and meet people from all over the world. Most are lost when it comes to this goal, but many that I have met do see the bigger picture. There is a nice little expression which says may you live to one hundred and twenty. When I tell this to people the usual response is “no chance”. “I don’t want to live that long”.

However, then I came across someone who gave me a different version of this and he said to me may you live to one hundred like a twenty-year-old. That is, it! Absolutely spot on. The main goal we should all be aiming for in life is without a doubt health. Health is the true measure of quality of life.

Personally, I have seen first hand how the baby boomer generation lived their lives around a focus on enjoyment. Food, travel, smoke, alcohol and plenty more emotionally addictive habits. They lived it up nicely and I can look back and say yes many enjoyed plenty of the few years that life had to offer. But while all this was going on two massive industries were growing rapidly the one being fast moving consumer goods specifically unhealthy fast and convenient foods laden with everything to make you lick your lips. The second the health industry mainly pharmaceutical and medical technology expanding just as fast with big advances in medical treatments and new market drugs.

While all this was going on the baby boomer hit their middle ages thinking life is short just enjoy and look forward to those early retirement years but then something big happened. A trend of major health issues hit them so hard it was like a domino effect reaching far and wide to all corners of the globe. No matter who you were and what status you held there was absolutely no escaping the ill choices you made when you were younger. Lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, emphysema, coronary disease and many more started to take its toll and not just on the baby boomers but to many of their children who were just as exposed to these ill-chosen lifestyles.

I am a baby boomer child. I have witnessed so much illness from the generations before me. I witness their daily suffering and have over heard some of them begging for an end to it and an early death. I said to one such person it will never happen. The health care providers and pharmaceutical companies are going to keep you alive as long as they possibly can. They will make sure you live long no matter how bad your suffering. Doctor visits, hospital admissions, blood transfusions, endless medication and operations will become the norm. Why? Because this is where they make most of their money. Your suffering are the billions of dollars that enter their pockets. They will not let you go quickly or easy.

I personally am in two minds here. On one hand I am very angry with you as a generation. You took life for granted, you argued and debated you knew better. Every single bad health choice you made you justified with the biggest load of nonsense that even as a child I understood. You not only made the ridiculously health damaging choices for yourselves, but you were so selfish you exposed us all to your unhealthy lifestyles and infected many us in the process making your own children fall victim to illness and only because of your own selfish emotional desires.

However, on the other hand I do need to thank you. You opened my eyes and gave me the opportunity to decide a long time ago never to follow in your footsteps. I chose a different path. I have put health first and I will educate my children and the masses to take on the same road.

You all have a fork in the road of life which I hope you hit earlier rather than later but here is the shocking truth.

The fork to the left is the one following in the steps of the baby boomer generation and falling victim to health issues and illness early on in life. Allowing you to become another money-making figure for the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies and believe me they will extend your life and suffering for as long as possible to keep their revenues high. If you think you can get away with it then I wish you good luck. I promise you that neglecting it will allow you to live many miserable years of suffering on this planet.

Or, you can take the road to the right, choose health and a quality life. Nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress can all be managed if you make the conscious decision to prioritize and place it first above all else. You think it is hard, but if only you knew what was awaiting around the bend for you if you don’t. I have seen it first hand, don’t fall victim to the mistakes of the previous generation. After all, without health there is no hope, without hope there is nothing.

One hundred like a twenty-year-old, now that’s a goal!

All the best

Mark Wolff is a certified sports nutritionist and an endurance nutrition and physiology expert with over 20 years experience. An endurance multi-sport athlete with a triathlon, mountain biking and weight lifting background, he works extensively with professional and amateur athletes in a variety of sports disciplines as well as those just wanting to change their lifestyles. He firmly believes that a person can only reach their full potential when their health and nutrition is down packed. Mark’s focus on nutrition and physiology is not just on training and racing, but he places major emphasis on recovery, immune system health, emotional stability, stress management and performance. Mark is co-founder of 32Gi, a sports nutrition company, focused mainly on health and endurance nutrition.

No matter what sport you participate in from gym goers to endurance junkie’s preparation for a session require not just a wake up and go but an actual strategy for how you are going to fuel yourself before during and after your session.

I often get asked the question of what and it ultimately depends on a few factors which need to be seriously taken into consideration.

These are:

What time are you training?

How long are you training for?

What intensity are you training at?

When are you training again?

Without clearly understanding the objectives of your workout how can you possible achieve the desired outcome. Secondly, what is your main goal?

Weight loss?

More lean muscle mass and a better physique?

Better fitness and endurance?

More muscle mass?

Less body fat?

Health?

Did you know that just training without the proper nutrition around it is just a complete waste of time? You really need to take this into consideration if you want to achieve your goals especially from a health point of view.

I have often used the analogy of comparing a human body to a vehicle. So, you want the body of a Ferrari which is awesome. But instead of having high performance fuel you use a very low-grade petrol and oil. You don’t take care of the engine yet you expect the “Ferrari” to perform. That is ridiculous. You think you can treat your engine like a VW beetle and perform like a Ferrari. Sorry friend it isn’t going to happen. If you look at it from a health perspective imagine placing really bad fuel into the engine and then trying to get it to accelerate to an extremely high speed, with barely any water in the engine. Yes, that’s you, the athlete or lifter who thinks they can eat KFC in moderation and then push out huge weights or high wattage. Eventually the pipe will burst, the engine will blow something will have to give and it always does. Maybe not immediately but certainly over time. If you have a high-performance vehicle you will go out of your way to make sure that the best fuel, oil and tires are used. Same with your own body, if you treat it with high performance fuel and give it the best, you can only expect it to perform at its best.

Do you know what the advantage of being human is?

We might not look like a high performing vehicle or have that lean muscular or fast physique, but one thing we have which a vehicle doesn’t is we can change our shape. We can completely reshape ourselves inside and out and that all boils down to the fuel we place in our engines. It should be the best. I am not talking about illegal substances and quick fixes which impact your health. I am speaking about proper nutrition which will keep you on the journey from a health and performance perspective to reach your goal.

I often hear people saying everything in moderation. What rubbish. If I ate everything I enjoyed in moderation it would be disastrous. Imagine I drank wine, coke and beer in moderation, ate pizza in moderation and the followed that up with some chocolate in moderation. My eating week would be hell. Moderation is an absolute excuse for the lazy to sacrifice their health and goals for emotional attempts at making their serotonin levels rise to fill their minds with awesomeness. In the end it’s a losing battle. You are what you eat and it couldn’t be more accurate than that.

Now with all this in mind I have completely drifted away from the discussion of actual fueling and now that we know how important nutrition is let’s go back to that awesome topic of where to start.

Today we are going to focus on the pre-workout nutrition. It’s going to be critical when trying to achieve a certain training goal.

I asked many questions above? Let’s review them and decide how to tackle our pre-training nutrition.

Time of the training session:

This is crucial as if you are waking up at the crack of dawn and going straight out on an exercise session do you really feel like eating so early on. Is it absolutely necessary to consume something at 4am. Well the truth is it depends on the next question.

How long and how intense is your workout going to be.

Only 60-90minutes long or maybe up to 2hrs or longer. This will certainly make a difference.

Now look at the objective. Weight gain weight loss, body fat burn, fat efficiency for endurance. These all play a part of the puzzle.

Considering the above scenarios, I would suggest any workout lasting up to 90min does not need much fuel at all. The human body has natural energy stores which can keep you going at a high intensity for that period and you can pretty much do a fasted training session.

Check out my video explaining the Fuel Tanks of the Human Body https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3egjhBpfo0&t=2s this will explain clearly how your own natural energy stores work.

Training fasted will allow you to burn off body fat quite early on depending on the session you are doing and simultaneously allow you to become a fat efficient athlete. Many people battle mentally with this. They don’t feel so great and this is only because of habit and what I call the brain train. You have trained your body in a certain way, and its adapted to that. Attempting this is confusing and a shock to the system and so it takes shorter sessions over time building up to longer sessions to become better at it.

If you ever do a fasted training session you must know how to recover properly from it. Without proper recovery you will battle to make the gains you need and if there was a second session later that day you will be fatigued to turn out another quality workout.

I often get asked about muscle catabolism as opposed to anabolism with fasted training. My answer to that is for a session this short you certainly won’t catabolize your own muscle you have plenty of other fuel to work with. If you are a body builder and require a minimum daily protein intake which is much higher than an endurance athlete then a protein is most likely required at wake up and again later after for recovery however that is a different topic completely.

So, I threw a spanner in the works now telling you to train fasted. I am not saying it’s a must. As I do advise athletes on pre-workout nutrition prep to increase fat burn, naturally of course, make the brain happier and provide far better mental focus. There are many meal ideas and natural supplements which can be used to enhance the workout and allow you to perform very well while being rewarded with the same benefits.

I bet your next question is what are these and what I will do is give you a little insight into how I fuel my sessions to explain it a little further.

Not many people know but I did come from a weight lifting background into endurance sport, I once weight 112kg now only 66kg. So, I understand both worlds quite intimately, and how the body suffers in both. Each is unique. I train for endurance but I also do strength and both have their challenges.

At wake up my primary objective is to ensure I am alert and focused. Early morning sessions often sacrifice the final sleeping hours of major hormonal release and final deep sleep cycles. I won’t get into discussing the science of sleep now, however I can say this. Waking up in a deep sleep cycle can leave you feeling fatigued and tired. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

What are my goals as an endurance athlete?

Maintain a lean healthy muscle mass
Keep my immune system strong
Make sure I am a fat burning machine (fat efficiency is an endurance athlete’s best friend)
Ensure my energy levels are consistent

Wow what a list you might say
They are in no order of preference. Each of these are important to overall health strength and speed.

So, I will tell you how I do it.

It’s quite Simple. Firstly, for any athlete, the mental aspect plays a critical role. Strength of mind can get us through almost anything. However, this requires mental focus. This is where my favorite friend caffeine comes into play. This doesn’t mean any caffeine it means measurable caffeine. I use TrueStart performance coffee for this. It carries an accurate 95mg of caffeine per a serving and it’s a natural caffeine releasing for close to 6hrs which completely covers my workout. The best thing is its completely natural and as anyone knows I hate synthetic products.

I know per a kilogram of bodyweight how much caffeine I need before a workout and how long it will last me in order to provide me the right amount of focus to cover my session. TrueStart Coffee does the trick. What else does caffeine do? I free up more free fatty-acids which allow me more access to free energy floating around my body in simple terms more fat for fuel. I also like to load myself with green tea in the mornings. Research has shown that green tea can assist in decreasing fat storage and assisting with fat burn BUT to achieve this quite a fair amount needs to be consumed. I can drink anywhere from 6-20 cups a day depending on my mood. One cup is not going to do the trick but I love waking up to it. I like the taste and use it as a form of hydration.

Generally a session of up to 90-120min for me will be covered by the above due to my fat efficiency. However on slightly longer sessions. I make a little energy bomb and generally this is concoction of pure MCT oil, caffeine, nut butter and vanilla powder. Oh its s a BOMB and a tablespoon kickstarts my engine rapidly, of course I could add some BCAA’s and Beta Alinine to add more fuel to the fire, BUT that’s again for another discussion. I keep it simple depending on my goal. If I don’t feel like eating then I just add pure vanilla flavoured MCT oil or MCT oil with Vanilla powder to my TrueStart Coffee and that’s enough fire to get me going from the mug.

Another product I use when I am on the go is the 32Gi G-Shot, 60mg of caffeine per a serving in a simple snap sachet and easy to stack in my wallet, makes it a very convenient carry and use.

This type of pre-workout ensures I can churn out a quality session with-out compromising what I need. It is so effective you won’t believe the results after a few weeks. I often get asked what about carbs before your workout? Why?

I have natural carbohydrates stores in my body 2000 calories worth and they will easily see me for up to 2hrs of a high intensity exercise (Check out my video link I mentioned earlier) I use what I have no need to douse my flames. Raising my blood glucose levels before a session will just mitigate my fat burning ability so if my goal is to burn more fat why would I start my session off on the wrong foot? It doesn’t make sense. If workouts are much longer then that’s a completely different story and we will get to that in another blog. As for strength training the above would work just as well. So, weight lifters go crazy.

This is just a small share into my morning routine before a session, I will cover more topics of longer endurance sessions, fueling during and post exercise recovery. But for now, keep training hard, sleep well and eat even harder 😉

The Fitness Freak

P.S. I FORGOT

If you are keen on TrueStart Coffee there is a great deal at the moment Just Click Here

32Gi’s GShot is available online at the 32Gi Store Just Click Here

As far as MCT oil go there are a few, but Battle Brew and Natures Choice are two I have used which are awesome Dis-Chem stock Natures Choice and Chrome Battle Brew. Natures choice has a Vanilla flavour which is pretty decent.

As far as my nut butter bomb goes well I will certainly be giving you a recipe in the near future as I make it all myself 😉