Dehydration least to bad performance. Cold showers boost your metabolism and increase your mood for a few hours, it can even help fat loss (the metabolism spends more calories to heat), increase testosterone, and reduce anxiety. To do so, aim for 10 minutes per week of 10°C water exposure and let the body heat itself naturally afterwards. Focus brown fat zones: back of the head, neck, upper back. Your brain and body work worse when even slightly dehydrated. At rest, an adult requires .25L of fluid (a can or a glass) per hour for the first 10 hours of the day meaning 2.5L of fluid a day at rest. After our 10 first awake hours, we're maybe less active, but it's because our kidney filters less efficiently after that period. When exercising, you need 2mL of water per kg of bodyweight every 15mn, so .15L every 15mn when weighting 75kg making that .6L per hour exercising. All tap water worldwide contains at least few things that are bad for our body. Minerals (magnesium and calcium, called hard water) are good and increase water's pH level but the treatment applied adds DBPs that impact the pH, mineral levels, and fertility. Get your local tap water analyzed and look for DBPs level, especially fluoride (must be less than .5mg/L) as it impacts thyroid hormones linked with heart rate, mood, energy, metabolism, bone. Drink tap water only if fluoride level is low (< .5mg/L) to avoid thyroid and fertility problems. Brita-like filters work a bit but don't filter fluoride enough. Having 10-20 mg/L of magnesium reduces risk of cardiovascular mortality by 25%. Hard water (high pH with magnesium and calcium) are good for your body even if they taste bad.
Andrew HubermanEndurance is linked to fatigue management and fueling (energy production). People exercise to look and feel better for longer. To maintain proper mechanics over time, you must train breathing, posture, and movements. A quick fix to breathing is nasal breathing, another one is looking at your posture. Do both long steady state training and HIIT. A quick fix is exercise snacking meaning doing 20 seconds exercises 20x a week (like running up your stairs at the office or jumping jacks, doing matters more than the exercise itself) to raise the heart rate. 4 categories of daily endurance are: muscular endurance (doing one task repetitively), maximum aerobic capacity (maximum of work doable for a short amount of time), sustain a position, walk for long. You must be able to do them without feeling fatigued nor out of energy. Body fat leaves the body through respiration, precisely expiration of CO2 as fat is made of carbon, and we breathe O2 mostly to get rid of CO2 not to get fuel. Plants have the opposite carbon cycle, CO2 in and O2 out. As you improve your endurance, your resting heart rate lower and it's considered healthy if you're under 70bpm. The heart pumps stronger thus it lower its frequency to keep the same cardiac output (CO or Q). More endurance, stronger heart, lower rest rate (< 70bpm). Burning fat doesn't mean loosing fat. To enhance body fat loss, combine hypertrophy/strength/resistance training with some HIIT (intense training for 30 to 60 seconds, rest, repeat a few times) but the liver might hurt due to low glycogen level (< 75-50%). When in a hypocaloric state (to loose fat) where the body can't take glycogen from the liver nor glucose from the blood, it seeks fat. Fat (unlimited) and carbo-hydrate (flexible) work together. The body consumes lot of carbo-hydrates when exercising then compensate by consuming lot of fat afterward. What you eat prior to exercising influences the consumption of fat or carbohydrates, meaning that a slow-starter can change by eating some carbohydrates before, just make sure you have enough protein and fibber. Running for 2h doesn't run you out of carbo-hydrates. Protein represents only 10% of fuel until you run out of the main sources and it doesn't enhance performance. Loosing fat happens everywhere in the body at once, you can't focus a specific area. You can't optimize fat loss through specific exercises, it's about challenging yourself and having pleasure. With 15% body fat at 70kg, you can live 30 days without eating. Carbohydrates and fat are chains of carbon good as fuel while protein is none of that. If you remove carbohydrates, you performance will worsen. To progress, add something each week (round, weight, reps). Vary durations: 20 seconds burst with 1 minutes rest, 30 seconds with 2 minutes rest, 1 minute with 3 minutes rest, no rest. You can train long duration endurance by doing exercising targeting various muscles groups without rest (80% of max for 1 to 2 minutes). In case of running half a marathon, use 60% of your time just running to prepare muscle tissues, 10% dedicated to 20 seconds bursts, 10% dedicated to maximum speed, 20% running 800 meters and resting for double the time 2 or 3 times.
Andy GalpinLoosing weight is not about counting calories. A quality diet has quality healthy food: whole food with all nutriments in their pure original forms, especially plants. Un-packaged food is good and good food doesn't need advertisement. The more unheard-of ingredients, the worse the product is. Low-fat and low-sugar are warning signs too because they've probably been replaced with something else. Appearance of healthiness doesn't mean real healthiness. See what nutrition works for your body. Eat your food in a 10 hours window each day (time-restricted eating) for improved energy and reduced snacking, which is also good for your body as it needs times to recover (your gut and its microbes to clean it). Vitamin pills don't work, all you need is a proper diet, and they can even be counter-productive. Coffee, even decaf, and green tea are good. Seek polyphenol. Artificial sugars effect your gut, do things they're not supposed too, and can be worse than regular sugar. Avoid processed food.
Tim Spector