Today I’ve been researching some info about muscle cramps.

Last month in the mountains, while climbing a practically vertical wall of about 120 feet, I’ve got a severe muscle cramp in both hamstrings. Basically I couldn’t use my legs and was hanging there for several moments, a 50lbs backpack behind my shoulders, clenching my teeth together in pain. Luckily I was only a few feet away from a plateau, so I could get there and rest a few minutes, stretching and making the cramps go away.

All this happened after 4 hours of hiking. I consider myself a fit person, so it was kindof strange to get in that situation in the first place.

So after some research I’ve found that fitness doesn’t always play a big role when it comes to muscle cramps. Some of the reasons for muscle cramps may include:

• Poor Hydration, which was probably my case
• Fatigue (I’ve been sleeping only 2 hours the night earlier)
• Poor Flexibility (not really my case)
• Poor Nutrition (Maybe it was my case)
• Not enough oxygen (Usually I don’t do any hiking at those altitudes)

Even the strongest swimmers can get a muscle cramp in moments they don’t expect. I’ve heard some swimmers take a needle with them when they swim long distances into the sea, because apparently a muscle cramp goes away when you strike the muscle with a needle. I don’t know if I’d have the guts to do that, but I guess the perspective is a little bit different when you are “on the edge”. We all can do wonders when it comes to our pesonal life ;).

A needle wouldn’t help me much on that wall though, as my hands were a little bit busy in that moment

You can read more about muscle cramps here.

An equilibrium in your lifestyle is the key to health, longevity and high productivity. The three “factors” that play a major role here are:

• Diet
• Exercise and
• Sleep

Each has its own balance point. For example, a balanced diet must have the right amount of total calories (depending on your weight and energy expenditure), vitamins, carbs, fibre, unsaturated fats and protein. A balanced sleep should be not too long and not too short. It should always be at the same time of the day and be relaxing enough to “charge your batteries” for the following day. And so on.

They also have a common balance point. Once one of the factors gets out of balance it provokes disequilibrium of the common balance that can deteriorate the balance of the other factors. It is like a team working together where everyone depends somehow on the actions of the other team players. And when a key member has problems, the team’s productivity falls dramatically. The same happens with your body.
Lets see how they affect each other:

Sleep imbalance:

Influence on diet: A University of Chicago team led by Eve Van Cauter investigated how your diet is affected by sleep deprivation. The subjects that slept only 4 hours during several weeks showed increased levels of cortisol (also known as junk-food hormone) and increased their daily caloric intake by 1,000 calories. The subjects’ insulin and blood sugar levels resembled the impaired glucose tolerance of prediabetics, an indication that they were no longer properly processing carbohydrates.
Studies have also linked sleep deprivation to an increased incidence of obesity. (Source: Wikipedia)

Influence on exercise: Tiredness is enemy No.1 of exercise. And it can be a real issue for those who need a lot of motivation in order to workout. I consider myself a person of a great willpower. But when I don’t get my 6.5-7 hours of sleep it costs me a lot to do a workout on the following day. This state of fatigue could also lead to a burnout or complete loss of interest.

Overall health problems: Harvard’s Medical School research showed an increased level of stress hormones in those who didn’t get enough sleep at night. An increased level of stress hormones like cortisol is believed to be one of the main reasons for hypertension, heart attacks and even cancer.

Diet imbalance:

Influence on sleep: Your body has to work in order to digest all the food you ate. If you eat right before bedtime or if you eat too much in the evening your body will have to dig half of the night instead of relaxing. This could lead to fatigue next day or even insomnia during the night. Additionally keep in mind that some foods can provoke restlessness and should not be taken during the evening time. This includes coffee, black and green tea, chocolate and others.

Influence on exercise: A big meal or a meal high in simple sugars makes you tired due to high release of insulin. It’s a fact. Therefore it has the same effect as sleep deprivation. Moreover, a very disproportionate diet won’t provide you with the right amount of proteins and/or carbs you need for the exercise to have the best effect.

Overall health problems: You are in danger of becoming overweight/obese with all the related diseases like high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. As a matter of fact over 95% of diseases reaching from cold to cancer can be prevented with the right diet.

Exercise imbalance:

Influence on sleep: Have you ever noticed that going for a walk in the evening makes your sleep deeper and better than when you sit all day at home? When you muscles have worked constantly they are more ready to relax at night, which makes your sleep more pleasant. Sitting all day on the couch or at work stiffens your muscles. This is mostly not consciously perceivable, but makes it much more difficult to relax at night.

Even a short 15 minutes stretching routine before bedtime can help to relax and sleep better. Some say that you shouldn’t do exercises 2 hours before sleep. But recent studies showed that exercising right before sleep doesn’t provoke any irregular sleep patterns. In other words, it doesn’t matter when you exercise, especially when it’s a “soft” exercise like stretching.

Influence on diet: Lack of exercise makes it much more difficult (if not impossible) to achieve your goals. Please read my last post about it.

Overall health problems: These are quite obvious. And the endless list of the health problems derived from lack of exercise is beyond the scope of this post.

Health cannot be achieved by doing right one thing only. It is rather like a teamwork of many factors you have to take care of. Quick fixes are useless. It requires some time management skills and persistence. But the payoff is definitely worth it.

Live strong!

It is very hard, if not impossible, to maintain or lower your body’s fat levels when not exercising at all. The more you exercise you get, the wider margin you have to mess with your daily calories intake.

Let’s look at the problems of a diet without exercise: The only way to get rid of fat is to burn it through exercise that makes your body burn more calories at a given time x than the calories amount available from the sugar in your blood.

Let’s take a look at this setting: A lazy person Y decides to trick the system by eating much less but staying on the couch. “Theoretically”, he/she thinks, “the effect should be the same as you eat less than you spend for sitting on the couch. Therefore the body will have to burn the fat.” Is it right? No way! His/her body is much more intelligent than the brain attached to it.

Here is how it really works: The body perceives the changed circumstances and will start adapting to them. The first activated mechanism will be to lower the energy expenditure and the second to conserve available energy supplies as long as possible.

Therefore your body will:

1. Get rid of energy spenders: your muscles. Your body literally eats itself. Therefore it can be considered as self-cannibalism
2. Conserve the fat as long as it has the gained energy from destroying your muscles. Additionally, it will turn much more calories you take in into the fat instead of using them. Even if that energy is not enough to survive, your body will prefer conserving it “for dark days” and destroy your muscles instead.

What is the outcome? “Who needs muscles” (somebody shouts in the audience). Well, guru, think twice. Your body conserved the most fat layers but destroyed the energy spenders at the same time. Therefore it is spending less energy now and can survive on your newly adapted low-calorie diet.

Now with less muscle mass it will be much more difficult to burn that fat. Moreover, your body is in defence stage now and will not give up on the fat so easily.

Congratulations, you got yourself into a downward spiral of obesity that is hard to get out of. But it’s not impossible.

Here’s what you should do:

1. Convince your body that it is safe and has plenty of food available. For this, you should start eating 5-7 small meals high in complex carbs to give your body a constant energy flow.
2. Gradually increase the energy intake by 10-15% a week until you reach your “perfect LEAN weight”. You can use the same formula that you use for BMI calculation (activity multiplicator 1.35 already included for the following exercises):English BMI Formula BMI = ( Weight in LEAN Pounds / ( Height in inches ) x ( Height in inches ) ) x 703 x 1.35Metric BMI Formula BMI = ( Weight in LEAN Kilograms / ( Height in Meters ) x ( Height in Meters ) ) x 1.35
3. At he same time add endurance and strength exercises into your weekly schedule and increase the difficulty weekly.In endurance, you could start with fast walking 1 hour a day, 3-4 days a week. Then, after few weeks switch to jogging half an hour, 4-5 times a week. Later add some interval training. NOTE: This is just an example. You could do other exercises like riding a bike or swimming.In strength training you don’t have to lift huge weights. You also don’t have to buy protein supplements and all the junk pills. But you have to do some strength (3 times a week) training to restore the lost muscles as they are your only tool for burning fat.

The difference between spending calories through exercise and on the couch is that exercise produces short-time calorie deficit. While exercising your body doesn’t have time to adapt to the changed circumstances and has therefore no other choice than using its fat reserves.

That is the reason why you should never train more than 40-60 minutes non-stop. After that your body starts feeding itself on expense of your muscles. Bad idea. If you want to train more, do it in 2 sessions: 40 min in the morning and 40 in the evening.

I hope this post cleared some misunderstandings and made the point why exercising is so important, especially when losing weight. Think twice when abruptly cutting on your calories, beware of the recoil.

One last thing. The process of energy expenditure during the exercise is a bit more complicated than described. I simplified it in order to show my point more clearly. But the essence is the same.

Live strong.