Archives for January 2023

January 3, 2023 By GOQii 5 Comments

Why You Need To Consume More Water During Winter

Winter can be a dreadful experience if you don’t have the resistance to withstand cold. While searching for things to keep us warm from the outside and within, consuming water is quite low on our winter checklist. But there are many reasons why you need to consume more water during winter – one of them being that we get more dehydrated during winter.

Why Do We Feel More Dehydrated During Winter?

It’s a fact that we get more dehydrated in winter when compared to summer. This is because when the surrounding temperature drops, we cling to the heater or cover ourselves with layers of clothing to keep us warm. This artificial heat causes dehydration.

Though we do not sweat during this season, water vapor is still lost from our body through our breath. Winter can even accelerate dehydration because of the lifesaving mechanism that’s functional in our body which constricts our blood vessels in cold weather, in turn conserving heat and maintaining body temperature.

Shrinking blood vessels increase blood pressure, making our kidneys produce more urine which means less blood to fill in the veins and arteries and frequent visits to the loo, hence, increasing the risk of dehydration. Dehydration causes muscle fatigue, cramps, loss of coordination and even a stroke. A dehydrated body is easily prone to flu and winter cold.

Basically, during winters we refrain from having enough water. With the days being short, it makes us exercise less and our food intake grows. When our body is well hydrated, its efficiency to break down fat for energy increases so that we have better control of our appetite.

The other concern is that of water retention due to the body not being well hydrated during winter. This takes place when our body starts feeling the scarcity of water and it starts holding back water leading to water retention.

How do I know if I am dehydrated? – Thirst is our body’s way of saying “I am on the verge of dehydration”. You can even be watchful of how clear or light colored your urine is. If it is dark, hydrate immediately.

How Do I Consume More Water During Winter?

Drink Warm Water: 90% of the excuses that we give for not having water in winter is that it makes us feel cold. The best solution here is to drink lukewarm water, which would not only soothe your throat but will also replenish your water stores while boosting your metabolism
Balance Tea and Coffee With Water: Caffeine and alcohol are diuretics (they cause us to lose more water through urine), so try to have a glass of water before having your evening tea/coffee. Have another glass after a few mins of after having your tea/coffee This way, we can replenish our body’s water store.
Include Water Based Food In Your Menu: Vegetables and fruits are naturally rich in water, which also provide vital minerals and vitamins. Soups are the best way to go! Try this Chilli Bean Soup to keep you warm: https://goqii.com/blog/chilli-bean-soup/
Drink Water Throughout Your Exercise: Make it a point to have water before, during and after your exercise. Due to the cold climate, there are very fewer chances of sweating too much or feeling too thirsty, mind it your body needs it!
Make Water Interesting: Many find drinking plain water very boring. If you are one of them, then you can add natural flavors to water (not free calories though) by adding some fruits or herbs which give the water some mild taste and make it delicious to sip on.

In conclusion, I would say be it summer, monsoon or winter, our body remains same through the year. So keep sipping and always stay hydrated! If you have difficulty keeping track of your water intake, you can log and track your daily water intake via the GOQii App as well as set reminders to drink water.

We hope this article helps you consume more water. For more on staying healthy during winter, check out Healthy Reads or ask a GOQii Coach by subscribing for Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce

January 2, 2023 By Tanmaya Patil 4 Comments

5 Muscle Building Mistakes Which Might Be Keeping You From Your Goal

If you’ve been looking at motivational posters on social media or your local gyms which have “go hard or go home” or “work until your muscles hurt” or “no gain without pain” or something to the effect of relating success to extreme weight training, then you’ve clearly been looking at the wrong posters. We come over so many cases where users claim that they’ve been at it in the gym for so long without ever achieving their desired result. In order to help you avoid the same fate, we’re sharing this article on muscle building mistakes!

Common Muscle Building Mistakes to Avoid

1. Prioritising Quantity Over Quality
We live in an age where we believe more is better. A gaze around the gym might show mindless addition of reps and set backed by piling unreasonably more plates (mostly on the leg press machine and rarely the squat rack if not for 1/100th partial rep squats). Most folks aiming to add muscle might believe training seven days a week must undeniably be better than three. What these people fail to realise is the foundation of quality muscle building still rests upon what it used to be about a hundred years ago – Getting stronger. Becoming stronger is neural training. The central nervous system demands its necessary share of rest before it is ready to tackle new challenges in your next workout. In the words of the Bodybuilding Legend Lee Haney: “Stimulate, not annihilate!”

Pro Tip: Build Movement Quality in a lift before gradually adding volume (sets and reps), before gradually adding weight.

2. Chasing The Pump
If you are a true meathead, you remember the first time you curled that lonely barbell in the gym and the immediate next thing you did was flex your arms before the nearest mirror. It’s okay if you did. Pursuit of the ‘pump’ or build-up of metabolic fluid as a result of high volume resistance training in a muscle has fascinated millions of people entering muscle building. The degree to which pump helps increase muscle size fades as quickly as the pump itself a few hours after training. Don’t get me wrong, metabolic and high rep training has its place, though making every exercise in your program a high rep per set one in order to feel the temporary pump at the expense of actually getting stronger (refer to point 1 above) would be a big miss.

Pro Tip: Focus more on documented progress in weight lifted and the volume for which it is lifted rather than an arbitrary goal like ‘feeling the pump’.

3. Pain is (the only way to) Gain
Most people wearing the ‘Pain is Gain’ t-shirts have a very myopic vision of their training years. Most of them belong to the late teens to late twenties. Fast forward ten years and they may soon begin to laugh at their idea of ‘balls-to-the-walls’ intensity every workout, week after week. As we age, especially as we enter 30s, training revolves more about recovery than making unending progress. Joints and connective tissue take a solid hit if we are really lifting seriously. As such, making every workout a masochistic fiesta can seriously hamper our joints’ ability to outperform them later.

Pro Tip: It’s okay if a workout didn’t leave you hurt and devastated. Try to make a majority of your workouts in a year energizing and your training longevity might increase by several years.

4. Taking Supplements Is Like Pressing A Switch
All of us know that someone who swears by his or her shelf full of powders and pills claiming to transform them into a machine. Supplements have their place in the life of serious strength and physique athlete. However, replacing natural, real food with doses of meal replacement drinks is a strategy that might fail to deliver real robust and healthy changes in your physique. Quality, natural and fresh nutritional food would always beat sole supplementation.

Pro Tip: Make a select handful of supplements such as Whey and Creatine Monohydrate a tool to fill in the gaps in your nutrition wherever or whenever you see it, rather than a staple in your diet.

5. I Need To Train Like A Pro
In the pursuit of ‘Big Guns’, an amateur might look up the internet for the training split of an eight time Mr. Olympia winner and begin to emulate it in his training. The efforts might soon begin to be outweighed by the stopping of gains through either injury or incorrect loading parameters and the trainee might soon end up in dire frustration before switching to an altogether new program, this time followed by a multiple ‘World’s Strongest Man’ title winner.

Many individuals fail to understand that it might take more than a decade of continual solid and consistent effort with the big lifts in order to come anywhere near being called a pro. And we aren’t even talking about ‘pharmaceutical aids’ yet.

Pro Tip: Aim for Health first, followed by getting stronger, followed by improvement in appearance whenever drawing out your training strategy or designing a muscle building program.

We hope this article helps you avoid these common muscle building mistakes and aids you in making the right choices. For more on fitness, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions on GOQii PRO within the GOQii App, where you can get one-on-one guidance in real time by certified fitness experts.

#BeTheForce

January 1, 2023 By GOQii 1 Comment

How To Stick To Your New Year Resolutions!

A new year has begun and with it, its once again time to make new resolutions. We’re sure a lot of you have already penned down your new year resolutions but what are these new year resolutions? More often than not, it’s a promise that we make to ourselves or with our near and dear ones to kick one bad habit and imbibe a good change for a better future.

New Year Resolutions Could Be:

Weight loss
Get fit and regular exercise
Eating healthy
Joining yoga class
Giving up smoking
Quitting excessive alcohol consumption
Playing a sport

Largely, I have noticed that most resolutions are around health and lifestyle. What is difficult though is to stick to the resolution made. It’s not easy to keep the enthusiasm going week after week. Especially when you have never played a sport or been active in the past. It’s not easy to maintain the same motivation levels throughout the year. Discipline is hard to come by. Most people don’t feel motivated enough and they give up within few days. It takes focus, planning and determination to stick to resolutions made. It takes the same amount of time to change a particular habit.

Tips To Stick To Your New Year Resolutions

Golden Rule: Make your goal achievable and do not aim for goals which are too difficult to achieve

Once you have decided on your achievable resolution, write it down. Writing it down makes a greater connection between your thinking self and doing self. This makes the resolution more real than it is only in your head.
Change one behaviour at a time. Replacing unhealthy behaviours with healthier ones requires time.
Fitness cannot be your short-term goal.
If you want to eat junk food, think what are the benefits you will derive from it. It’s the same as thinking before making any financial investments. Occasionally you can include a piece of Pizza or a burger but not daily.
If you are looking to reduce 20kg then achieve the target by reducing 2-3kg a month. It is not practical to lose 20kg in 2 months because it took years to accumulate all that fat and it will only go away slowly.
If you want to quit smoking and you are smoking 20 sticks a day, then reduce it gradually. You cannot stop immediately because it will take some time for your body and mind to adapt to the change.
If you intend to start working out, yoga or any other activity in the morning then begin with 3 days a week instead of 7 days a week.
For working out, most have the issue of waking up early. Try to start at a time comfortable to you. If you wake up daily at 8am but plan to start working out at 5am then it will seldom happen because your circadian system will take time to adjust. Instead try to wake up at 7 am which is practical and you will continue for a long time.
Be positive while thinking about your achievable goal. Instead of saying I cannot do something, say I feel much better doing this.
Always tell your near and dear ones about your resolution and seek their support in order to successfully achieve your goal.
Review your progress and reward yourself on the first target achieved

Lastly, we would say do not wait for anything. Every day is a new day. Start working on your resolution immediately. There is the famous saying, “Whatever you want to do tomorrow, do it today and whatever you want to do today, do it now!”

Go right ahead and work on your New Year Resolutions. If you have already penned them down and want the right guidance and motivation, reach out to an expert by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce of 2023!