 Once you have mastered LEVEL ONE of our LEVELUp Your Fitness Strategy:
The improved cardio-respiratory fitness you will get from mastering LEVEL ONE has many benefits, including increased longevity (low cardio-respiratory fitness is associated with twice the incidence of all-cause mortality).  However, an independent factor, muscular strength (along with mass), provides an increased longevity boost of a similar magnitude. Muscular fitness also improves:
So to get the full complement of benefits from exercise, we recommend that you LEVELUp by:
Resistance training is any exercise where your muscles resist external forces. This external resistance can come from your body weight, weights (barbells, dumbbells), machines, bands, or anything heavy! The goal is to improve muscular fitness by increasing:
For beginners, this means either two full-body workouts - for more advanced programs, this could represent multiple split-body workouts each week. What are the six major muscle groups?  Which exercises hit the major muscle groups? There is a limitless supply of exercises to choose from for resistance training, and it can be challenging for beginners to prioritize specific exercises over others. Choosing the exercises for your workout can be simplified by focusing on four major categories of exercises.  A functional full-body workout includes at least one exercise from each of these four categories. These four categories will cover the major muscle groups. If you are creating your workout, choose four exercises, one from each category! Here is an example of a weight training workout that incorporates an exercise from each of the four categories:  Variables for Resistance Training Reps (repetitions) How many times you perform an exercise in a row (i.e. 10 squats). Sets How many times you perform a group of reps (i.e. 2 sets of 10 squats). Perform all sets of a given exercise before moving on to the next. Resistance How much resistance you use (i.e. a load of 20 lbs, a red resistance band pulled back 1 meter away, your body weight). Rest How long to take a break before repeating another set of the given exercise (i.e. 1-minute rest between sets of push-ups). Recovery Recovery is the process of allowing the body to recover from the training stimulus. Muscles are damaged slightly during resistance training and take about 48 hours to recover and get stronger, making sure not to train the same muscles hard every day. Getting proper sleep, nutrition, and taking time off of hard training is essential to maximize recovery. Training to Failure Training to failure means performing as many reps as possible of a given exercise until the muscles can no longer produce enough force to overcome the resistance or until the proper technique starts to break down. Perform most exercises within a few reps of failure (about 0-4) to ensure the muscles are challenged enough to drive adaptation. Guidelines for the Workout There are many ways to train, but we recommend that beginners utilize the following guidelines:
Need help starting resistance training? Get a personalized fitness plan to help you get started, progress or improve your enjoyment of physical activity The TARGET Fitness Plan gives you expert advice to transform your exercise habits - whether you are getting started or want to improve your current program. Our exercise physiologist will assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized fitness plan based on the LEVEL Up Your Fitness Strategy. NEXT Week - Part 2 - Tips on Resistance Training Exercising for 150 minutes or more per week at moderate to vigorous intensity will provide you with most of the health benefits of exercise. Multiple sessions, as short as ten minutes, add up to keep you fit and healthy. Combining exercise with moving throughout the day while avoiding long periods of sitting provides a strong foundation for a healthy life.  Photo by Lital Levy on Unsplash In our LEVELUp system, we refer to this as: Level 1
Remember, consistency is much more important than intensity. When you consistently hit these targets for 6-8 weeks, you will be ready to progress to Level 2. What is moderate to vigorous physical activity? Intensity depends on your fitness level. Your breathing will be an excellent guide. During moderate-intensity exercise, you will be breathing more rapidly than at rest, but you can still have a conversation, although your sentences will be a little shorter as you catch your breath. At vigorous intensity, holding a conversation becomes more difficult or impossible! Some examples of moderate-intensity:
150 minutes sounds like a lot of time!
Spreading out your exercise across six days maximizes the benefits while only taking 2% of our waking hours. We recommend at least three days per week of exercise. The challenge when you start is that the individual session may seem long if you exercise fewer days. Either way - make a plan that works for you. We also recommend that everyone at this level take at least one day off per week from exercise. A day off will keep you fresh. Of course, you will need to stay active and move throughout your off-day. How do I know when to increase the duration of exercise? Go slow and listen to your body. Moderate exercise should feel relatively easy and should leave you feeling refreshed and energized. You should not be fatigued the following day. If you feel fatigued at any point as you build up, decrease the duration for a few days until the fatigue passes, then build by adding a few minutes every few days. Decreasing the duration is always better than taking the day completely off. Let fatigue be your guide. If I haven’t exercised previously (or in a long time), what should I do? For most people getting started, walking will be the first mode of exercise. Walking is simple, low-risk, and accessible to most people, and moving briskly or going up hills can be a great way to elevate the heart rate. If walking is not accessible to you, consider swimming, cycling, or using an exercise machine (i.e. stationary bike, rowing machine, elliptical, etc.). What if I’m ready to push myself? Wait until you have been exercising for at least four weeks before you push yourself. This will give you a base of fitness that will prepare you for higher intensity. It will also decrease your risk of injury. After four weeks, you can increase your intensity in a workout and see how your body responds. Every few weeks, you can add another vigorous-intensity workout until you reach three per week. Always follow a vigorous (hard) day with a moderate (easy) day. If you are fatigued on the day you have scheduled your vigorous workout, go with another moderate (easy) day. Listen to your body and progress slowly. Walk before you jog, jog before you run, run before you sprint. Injuries are common when intensities become too high too quickly. You should always start with lighter efforts and gradually increase the effort as your body feels healthy and ready. Remember, now is the time to build excellent behaviour patterns and a strong aerobic base. The time for intensity will come later. Making the Change Developing consistent exercise behaviours is key to mastering Level 1. Here are some tips to help keep you consistent:
Once you are up to 150 minutes per week, keep it up for 6-8 weeks, and you will have mastered Level 1! We hope that you can keep the Level 1 behaviours indefinitely, but we encourage you to take the next step and move to Level 2. More exercise will generally provide more significant benefits, and incorporating Level 2 behaviours certainly will. Asking for Help If you are experiencing any of the following, consider meeting with your doctor, physiotherapist, or an exercise professional like a kinesiologist or exercise physiologist to help you on your exercise journey:
Final Plan We will use the FITT principle (frequency, intensity, type, time) to highlight our plan to master Level 1. F - Move every hour, exercise daily. I - Moderate to vigorous intensity. T - Steady aerobic exercise. T - Move breaks for 2-5 minutes, exercise for 20-25 minutes. Good luck mastering Level 1! If you need help changing your behaviours, Wellness Garage is here for you. Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized fitness plan to help you get started, progress or improve your enjoyment of physical activity The TARGET Fitness Plan gives you expert advice to transform your exercise habits - whether you are getting started or want to improve your current program. Our exercise physiologist will assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized fitness plan based on the LEVEL Up Your Fitness Strategy. The first step to an active lifestyle is to move throughout the day. Exercise protects against chronic disease and premature death. Conversely being sedentary, increases the risk against these same diseases and is itself associated with premature death.  It has been estimated that prolonged sitting is responsible for 3.8% of deaths and that every hour of sitting is as harmful as the benefit from twenty minutes of exercise. A recent meta-study of over 1 million people demonstrated that it takes large volumes (60-75 minutes per day) of moderate to vigorous exercise to offset the risk of prolonged sitting. Even at this level of activity, some risk remains. The highest risk group is people who spend more than eight waking hours sitting and do not exercise. The lowest risk group spend less than 4 hours being sedentary and exercise 150 minutes or more per week. Prolonged sitting carries increased risk for both men and women across
Simply put, prolonged sitting is very damaging to your health and cannot be offset by exercising alone. Unfortunately, sedentary behaviour is an epidemic in modern life. In Canada, a review across all occupations showed that all workers spent a high proportion (65% to 73%) of their day being sedentary. How is all this sitting damaging our health? There are at least three mechanisms that drive the health risk of being sedentary:
A striking demonstration of how quickly this happens was a Danish study where healthy young men were instructed to limit their daily steps to less than 1500 per day. After just two weeks, they developed:
Combatting this sedentary behaviour through regular intervals of physical activity can significantly reduce these risks and provide health benefits. A multi-year analysis of 4757 people demonstrated that breaking up sitting with short breaks decreased waist circumference, reduced inflammation marker and improved blood glucose. Sitting is not the only sedentary behaviour! While we have focused on sitting, remember that lying and reclining are also sedentary behaviours. Even standing is better - studies show that it uses about 8-10% more energy than sitting. Moving every hour for a few minutes is optimal to gain the health benefits from exercise. Make sure to develop a few strategies that you can implement to increase your physical activity throughout the day. What are some ways that I can incorporate movement into my busy life?
Doing errands:
Start by choosing one or two behaviours that resonate with you, or perhaps create your own. Aim to increase your heart rate/breathing and muscle activity for 2-5 minutes every hour. Making the Change It takes effort to implement a new behaviour, and it will not happen unless you plan for it. Take a moment and consider where, when, and how you will implement this physical activity into your day. Consider the barriers to these behaviours and how you will accommodate or overcome them. Sample Scenario You are planning to walk around your floor three times every hour at work. Barrier 1: Getting busy with work and being “in the zone,” forgetting about it Solution 1: Setting an alarm or timer for every hour and putting the break in your schedule Barrier 2: Getting caught in a long, sedentary meeting Solution 2: Walking during potential breaks, pacing around the room or standing if possible, making sure to move before and after the meeting Planning for success is an essential step in changing your behaviours, and setting SMART goals is critical. Sometimes I just don’t have time. The reality is, you will have time to be healthy if you make time to be healthy. At moments (especially at work), tasks can be overwhelming, and time can feel restricted. Often the last thing you want to do when this happens is get up and move because you just want to finish up what you’re doing. Taking a 2-minute break from 58 minutes of steady work is not a huge time commitment. This short break is almost certainly going to improve your performance of the task, as physical activity is an excellent avenue for mental clarity. If you have found that breaks and distractions have impeded your productivity in the past, perhaps physical activity breaks will have a different effect. If not right away, then give it some time. Your body will get used to it and will thank you in the long run. Moving throughout the day is the vital first step of living a healthy and active lifestyle. If you need help changing your behaviours, Wellness Garage is here for you. Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized fitness plan to help you get started, progress or improve your enjoyment of physical activity The TARGET Fitness Plan gives you expert advice to transform your exercise habits - whether you are getting started or want to improve your current program. Our exercise physiologist will assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized fitness plan based on the LEVEL Up Your Fitness Strategy.
These benefits combine to improve longevity, reducing premature death from all causes by 16% and from cardiovascular disease by about 25%. Looked at another way, lack of physical activity is estimated to be the 4th leading cause of death and the principal cause for approximately:
These benefits come from relatively minimal efforts: 20 minutes of exercise and the avoidance of prolonged sitting every day. Twenty minutes a day to feel better and live longer - not a bad trade-off!  Photo by Jay Kudva on Unsplash biker The World Health Organization has set 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity/exercise and the avoidance of prolonged sitting (>8 hrs per day) as the threshold required to get most of the benefits from physical activity. Of course, the benefits do not stop at 150 minutes, and many people feel better with two, three or four times that amount. Not everyone incorporates consistent physical activity into their week, and these guidelines can be intimidating for those with busy schedules or a lack of exercise experience. In fact, only 17% of Canadians get 150 minutes of “moderate-to-vigorous physical activity” per week. (2019 Canadian Health Measures Survey)
This strategy will get you started and help you progress. Master each principle before working on the next. If you are new to exercise, start at the beginning. If you currently exercise, review each principle and begin with the lowest one you are not yet doing.
By following this strategy, you will develop habits that incorporate aerobic, resistance and functional movement activities, allowing you to accrue the benefits of exercise sustainably forever. We categorize exercise behaviours into two levels and encourage mastery at Level 1 to maximize physical activity enjoyment while minimizing injury. Level 1 At this level, you meet the WHO standard and accrue most of the health benefits from exercise.
After 6-8 weeks of consistently hitting these targets, you have mastered Level 1. You will have the foundation to progress your exercise to the next level, getting even more benefit in the process. Level 2 This next level expands on the foundational behaviours by incorporating a portfolio resistance, aerobic, and functional movement training into your routine.
After 6-8 weeks of consistently hitting these targets, you have mastered Level 2. We hope that everyone can become Level 2 athletes, progressing their fitness and enjoying the benefits for the rest of their lives. Next week: Move throughout the day - the first step to an active lifestyle. Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized fitness plan to help you get started, progress or improve your enjoyment of physical activity The TARGET Fitness Plan gives you expert advice to transform your exercise habits - whether you are getting started or want to improve your current program. Our exercise physiologist will assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized fitness plan based on the LEVEL Up Your Fitness Strategy. 
Now it is time to put it into action - so let’s address some common questions: Where to start? Start with at the beginning - implement steps 1, 2, 3:
Working on these key behaviours will leave you well-nourished and satiated. Getting enough protein and fibre balanced with healthy fats will prevent you from over-eating. Your body will do what it is designed to do with these actions - superbly balance food intake with your energy requirements. Focusing on these first three steps will make the following behaviours easy: The final behaviours are fine-tuning. Many of us eat for reasons other than hunger - boredom, stress, habit, reward etc. Learning to take the time to listen to your body’s satiation signals will help you be more intentional about why you are eating. Give your body a food break every day. Let your body show you the incredible ability it has to balance energy over time. Let your body show you that you have enough energy already. Doing a 12 hour fast every day has some powerful physiological benefits, but its real power may lie in the fact that you cut out the empty calories from nighttime snacking. In doing so, you also strengthen your ability to differentiate between hunger and the other signals driving you to eat: boredom, stress, habit, reward, etc. Some other questions: What do I do if I want to lose weight?
What if I have diabetes?
What if I have heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, etc.
What should I do if I need help?
Download a weekly EAT Better Planner  The EAT Better Strategy:
Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. “Eat like a king in the morning, a prince at noon, and a peasant at dinner.” Maimonides (1135–1204), a medieval Jewish philosopher/doctor The seventh and final behaviour in our Eat Better Strategy is straightforward: Go 12 hours without eating. Eliminating the extra calories from nighttime snacking may be the most significant impact for many, but embracing 12 hour daily fasts aligns with two principles derived from human evolution - circadian rhythms and fasting physiology.  The earth’s predictable, 24 hour, light/dark (diurnal) cycle has led evolution to develop circadian rhythms.
The light part of the cycle activates many genes while turning off others, preparing our body for what the day holds:
At night, the process reverses with the active daytime genes shutting down and others activating, setting our system up for the expected nighttime activities:
Up to 40% of our genes are affected by the diurnal rhythm. Light is the dominant trigger, but the presence or absence of food also plays a key role. Bottom Line: our bodies expect food in the daytime and fasting in the evening - evolution has designed us this way. Above and beyond the timing of eating, going without eating can trigger biological processes of repair and restoration collectively known as fasting physiology. From an evolutionary perspective, the ability to survive periods of starvation makes sense. Cells reprogram themselves during periods of fasting; recycling damaged intracellular proteins and organelles such as mitochondria. This process, called autophagy, provides energy and building blocks for cellular maintenance. Suppression of autophagy is associated with oxidative stress, inflammation, ageing and cancer. Research has demonstrated that intermittent fasting (IF) provides many benefits:
Consistently going 12 hours without food will likely provide many of these benefits and provide you with the foundation for IF. Before trying IF, we recommend that you follow the Eat Better Strategy principles for 4-6 weeks. If you are taking medications - please check with your doctor and develop a plan before initiating intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating. The EAT Better Strategy:
Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. The EAT Better Strategy:
Your body's ability to maintain weight over extended periods is truly a feat of nature. At a high level, maintaining weight over the long run, energy expended must equal energy consumed. For example, if you maintain your current body weight within two pounds, your body has matched your energy intake to your output with less than 1 % deviation. This feat is achieved through a symphony of signals between your brain and gut, carefully balancing hunger and satiation, adjusting your resting metabolic rate up or down like a thermostat to maintain such a fine balance. In your brain, the hypothalamus is the control centre for hunger and satiation, receiving nervous and hormonal signals to increase appetite or stop feeding. This signal to stop eating is vital to prevent overeating.  When we eat, nutrients in the food stimulate the release of multiple hormones, cholecystokinin, PYY, GLP-1, GIP, PP, from the cells lining our intestines. As the meal progresses, the circulating hormone levels increase until a "satiation threshold" is reached at the hypothalamus. Paired with this is direct information from the nerves in our distended stomachs and indirect signalling metabolites from bacteria in our gut - all these messages telling us we are full!
Our challenge is not that it is hard for us to know whether we have eaten enough; it just takes time. On average, it takes 20 minutes for these signals to cross the satiation threshold. If we eat too fast, it is easy to overeat as we realize we are full, really full, too late. The best strategy is what the Okinawans call "Hara Hachi Bu" - stop eating when you are 80% full. More often than not, you will feel fully satiated as a few more minutes go by, and your satiation hormones have had their time to work. A closely related strategy is simply slowing down and taking your time with your meal, breaking it into several small courses over 30 to 40 minutes like the French. Either way, you will find it easier to prevent overeating and help your body perform the wonder of energy balance. Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. The EAT Better Strategy:
Your body has a complex system to alert you to eat when hungry and stop you from consuming too much, Drinking beverages with calories bypasses this control and leads to over-consumption, excess calories and energy overload. In other words, drinking your calories makes it more likely you will get fat.  Substituting water for calorie-laden drinks not only eliminates the extra calories, studies show Increasing your intake of water can contribute to weight loss via two mechanisms:
Getting enough water should be simple - drink when you are thirsty. Many fail to heed their thirst and forget to drink, becoming chronically, mildly dehydrated and prone to weight gain. So if you cannot remember to drink, let your urine be your guide. Drink to maintain your pee at a light yellow colour. Dark yellow and orange urine tells you your body needs more water. How to get more water? Start your day with a glass of have and carry a water bottle with you all day and make drinking it a habit. If water seems boring, try infusing your water by adding:
Missing the carbonation of pop, then carbonate your water before infusing it. Carbonation, while lowering pH, has no detrimental effects, and if it gets you to drink more, it is worth the effort. What about coffee and tea? It is a myth that the caffeine in coffee and tea dehydrates. The only thing you have to watch out for is what else is in your favourite drink. Many of the beverages from Starbucks and other cafes are amongst the most calorie-laden, sugar-packed concoctions ever created. Alcohol is a double whammy - not only does alcohol itself have calories, but most drinks also are loaded with calories from fast carbs. Bottom line - only drink what you love; learn to love water. Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. The EAT Better Strategy:
If you were to design food to make you fat and sick, you would create ultra-processed food. Ultra-processed food is defined as “formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes” and containing minimal whole foods (Monteiro et al., 2018). In other words, food companies manufacture ultra-processed foods by combining substances extracted from whole foods with additives for taste, texture, shelf life and other factors that enhance the product’s profitability. Strip the food of fibre, load it with sugar and fat, then add salt for taste, and you have food that will
In other words, ultra-processed foods hack our appetite control mechanisms, making us fat in the process.  In 2019 Dr. Kevin Hall demonstrated this effect of ultra-processed foods in a study showing that eating ultra-processed foods results in increased calories and weight gain. Hall took ten men and ten women into an in-patient metabolic ward where they were randomly assigned to receive an ultra-processed or unprocessed diet for 14 days followed by another 14 days on the other diet. The subjects were given three daily meals and could eat as much or as little as desired. The two diets matched total calories, energy density, macronutrients, fibre, sugar, and sodium but differed widely in the percentage of calories derived from ultra-processed versus unprocessed foods. Hall’s study found that subjects ate over 500 calories a day more and gained about two pounds of fat in 14 days on the ultra-processed diet. The overeating was almost evenly divided between excess fat and excess carbohydrates while protein intake was unchanged. Not only did subjects eat more ultra-processed foods, but they also ate faster, and bloodwork showed the effects of this diet on essential appetite control hormones. Compared to eating whole foods, subjects showed:
Now you may be thinking, “I get it - it’s junk food, but I don’t eat that much of it.” But collectively, we do: 50% of the calories Canadians consume comes from ultra-processed foods!  A recent review found that increased ultra-processed food consumption correlates with higher risks of obesity, heart disease and stroke, diabetes, cancer, frailty, depression, and death.
No association between ultra-processed foods and beneficial health outcomes was found. Compounding these ill-effects is the fact that the more ultra-processed the diet, the less whole foods consumed. And eating lots of veggies, fruits, legumes, and whole grains has been associated with beneficial health outcomes. So how do you recognize ultra-processed foods - here we turn to Michael Pollan’s food rules:
What to eat? Check out these posts in our Eat Better strategy:
Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. The EAT Better Strategy:
Most people find fats confusing. They are technically challenging to understand, let alone keep straight:
And there is so much conflicting ‘information’:
Here is the real skinny on healthy fat, a way to cut through this confusion. Fats are an important part of what you eat. They are the most energy-dense food, providing taste and satiation to your meals. Fats also make hormones, modulate your immunity, support your nervous system, transport fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K), and form all of your cellular membranes. Some fats are essential (meaning your body cannot make them, so you have to eat them) - these are the Omega 3’s and 6’s. After over 30 years of demonizing fat, dietary recommendations now embrace the choice of healthy fats.  So far, so good - but what are healthy fats? This may be the most conflicted question in all of nutrition. Here are some things that almost everyone agrees with:
Quick Technical Guide to Fats  Here is our take - it is all about balance: 1. Balance your energy Think about fats and carbs as providing your energy, with protein for repair and maintenance. If you have followed the guide so far, you have built your meals around healthy protein packages and filled out your plates with healthy veggies, fruits, legumes, and whole grains. Now balance out your meal with healthy fats for taste, satiation, and of course, to meet your energy needs. High fat, low carb can work Low fat, high carb can work Medium fat, medium carb can work BUT High fat, high carb won’t work. 2. Balance your types of fats More than half of your fat should be monounsaturated.
Healthy fats come from whole food sources with minimal processing.
Think about the temperature you are cooking at - fats each have a smoke point at which they smoke and burn, yielding harmful free radicals and a burnt flavour. The more refined the oil, the higher the smoke point as the impurities that can burn at a lower temperature get removed.  *for refined oils, choose products that explicitly state that they are cold-pressed or expeller-pressed. If the oil does not note how it was processed - assume that it was extracted using chemicals.
Need help applying this to your busy life? Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health: The TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices. Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans). Everything you need to transform your diet. |
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