Nutrition and Fitness In Ramadan

During Ramadan, you’re body lacks in carbohydrates and essential nutrients to feed the cells and maintain your metabolism, but it does have healthy benefits for example stops the growth of cancer cells etc. Your body during ramadan is going through a process that a ship goes through when it’s sinking. When a ship is sinking, the sailors and the crew members start to throw off the things that they don’t need in the ship to lessen the weight. Well your body is going to be doing the same during Ramadan, it is going to throw away your muscle. Your body is constantly manufacturing glucose from fat or protein if necessary through a process called gluconeogenesis. During this process, no one can halt it, we all have to live with it.

In order to maintain our muscles during Ramadan, we have to break our muscle fibers more while not loosing most of the fat around it. The best way to accomplish this goal is by lifting higher weights that you can only do in a rep range of 5-6. During your rest period, you should intake as much protein you can get, maybe the amount you weigh and also drink at least 2.5 liters of water during the night. When breaking the fast, you must not eat lots of carbohydrates because your body will have high blood glucose level, your body will produce lots of insulin, so your cells will be constantly exposed to high levels of insulin as a result of a persistent intake of glucose. The problem is our cells will adapt to this by reducing the number of receptors on their surfaces to respond to insulin, causing insulin resistance, in other words you will get type 2 diabetes. So refrain yourself from eating a lot of carbohydrates. Eat lean meats, get protein and the bulk of the diet should be fats!

Do you have Heart Burn?

Have you ever had a burning sensation in your chest that comes and goes? Well in that case, you might be a victim of heart burn and you might want to cure it before you fall into prey for GERD or even pyrosis.

Heart burn occurs when the stomach acid backs up into your esophagus. In a normal case, when food or liquid is passed down through the esophagus, the lower esophageal sphincter would normally open or close to let food/liquid pass into your stomach.

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In an abnormal case, the esophageal sphincter wouldn’t close properly, resulting in the back flow of stomach acid which is hydrochloric acid. In most cases, this occurs due to our reluctance to change our bad eating habits. When you eat, you should not drink at the same time vice versa. You can observe an animal while it eats food, it will not drink and eat at the same exact time. The best way to cure this bad eating habit is to work on it daily. Drinking after digestion of food has occurred, wait 3 minutes. Mastication of food should be done first and then drinking afterwards. If your case is worse and doesn’t heal properly, then it may be the cause of a weak muscle in the sphincter itself and you should consult a doctor upon treatment.

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Another tip to keep in mind, a new diet may help heal the process as well. Stay away from acidic foods if you’re prone to heartburn; citrus fruits, tomatoes, garlic, onions and also spicy food. Heart burn is also caused by Acid Reflux, which is similar to the description above.

The secret to burning more calories!

This blog isn’t for people trying to gain mass, this one is for people that are simply trying to cut fat and produce lean muscle! In order for you to cut fat, you must understand the formula. If calorie intake equals the amount of Basal Metabolic Rate calorie amount, then you are not burning any fat and are desperately relaying on just exercising to loose fat. The truth of burning fat is to burn all the calories you’ve consumed for the day and more. That “more” part is where science comes in. You see when the body doesn’t have enough calories (glucose) to supply the body with energy, its going to try to burn the stored energy (fat) and convert it into energy (glucose). Vice versa, if you did not burn the calories for the day then guess what? Those calories are stored into fat, as a form for your body to use it later. Our bodies always store fat because it thinks we will starve it later when winter comes, just like the stone age times, but now we have food in front of us and we are never starving ourself, when will we ever use that left over energy (fat)? Only at the gym. It’s crucial for one to burn the calories one has consumed for a day or else the fat will add up overtime.

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Now the part on how to burn calories quickly as the gym, well its simple. The more muscle groups you use at once, the more calories you will burn. You will see people sweat more during bench pressing, dead lifting and even squatting. That is because these excercises are compound exercises, they require the body to use 2, 3 or even 4 muscle groups at once! It is better to use more muscles at once, rather than isolating just one muscle group because now your body isn’t working that hard. Always remember to perform compound exercises, they’re the most beneficial ones at the gym. Also while doing any other exercise, remember to tighten your core, it helps you contract your muscles in your core, resulting in abs over time.

 

What is a diet?

Dieting is the first word that comes to one’s mind when thinking about loosing weight. Understand that there are two type of dieters out there, one that are ignorant of what a diet actually is, while others that are very intelligent about what goes in their stomachs. You see a diet is when one’s retstrcit themselves from eating something like milk, rice, bread etc. You can still eat a lot of food while on a diet, you just have to be careful what exactly you’re going to eat. Ignorant dieters try to restrict every food group and they try to only eat a short amount of food in the day which isn’t healthy. Your body can’t produce essential amino acids on its own, it has to get them from some place, but you’re restricting the production, in the long run putting your body in danger. The best way to diet is to understand your body, know which food groups you need to focus on and know exactly how much calories your body needs for basal metabolic rate. BMR calculates the amount of calories one needs throughout the day based on their height, weight and age. Once you have figured out your BMR, you could start dieting. You could figure out how much calories you need throughout the day and start restricting yourself from 100 calories a day and eventually you will meet your goal by dieting the proper way. You will have to eat 5-7 meals per day but they have to be small, you could eat a big breakfast, eat a snack, get a good lunch, eat a snack again, get a small portion of dinner and then small nutritious snack to end the day. This plan is laid out in a course of one day, so don’t eat everything just at once! The point of eating small but a lot of times throughout the day is to keep you metabolism on its toes. The more your metabolism has to work, the faster it will learn to metabolize your food quicker. Once your metabolism increases it’s response, you’re no longer a victim of slow metabolism, but trust me, it takes time for that to build up and you have to be consistent and persistent.

I have laid out a picture of different food groups, I will elaborate more on which to focus on for which type of people.