Thursday weigh-in
Username ashleycarole86

PW 165.6
CW 162.6

@ashleycarole86 I really hear you on the work week time drain! I end up on a similar schedule to you. I get home earlier than you but I am frequently busy with kids until 7. It is easy to feel disappointed as time just slips away. I try to view myself as a weekend workout person and I just aim for 2 shorter workouts mon-thu. I am supposed to fit in 2 or 3 hiit workouts a week and hiit workouts shouldn't be longer than 30 minutes. It might be worth considering for your busy days. The reason it is helpful to do hiit vs. Steady state cardio is a little technical but ai will do my best to describe it. This doesn't mean you shouldn't do steady state cardio for longer times if you love it. Adding a few hiit workouts to your regular workouts can make a big difference. This information really helped me change up my workout schedule and stop eating sugar because they are connected.

First it's important to understand that our body uses and stores sugar as glucose. We store sugar in 3 parts of the body. We have an emergency stash in our liver and the body will only use it for low blood sugar or other emergency situations. Our muscles are composed of fast twitch muscles fibers that store 200 mg of sugar and slow twitch muscle fibers which store a little less sugar. Any extra sugar is stored in the fat cells. if you have eaten sugar recently you also have sugar in your blood stream on its way to one of the 3 storage areas.

If you workout regardless of the type of exercise and you have recently eaten sugar, your body will just use the sugar in the blood stream. If you are not eating excess sugar, your body will get sugar from your muscles and then fat.

When you do steady state cardio your body breaks down a sugar molecule and then your cells mitochondria processes it. Your body can maintain this pace and will generally not run out of sugar in the slow twitch fibers for hours. Your body will not need to break down fat for sugar either.

During hiit workouts you are using your fast twitch muscle fibers by keeping your heart rate above 70% of your max heart rate. Your body will need sugar from your muscles faster. All of the sugar in the muscle will be broken down and depleted so your body will turn to fat cells for more sugar. The other thing that happens is the mitochondria in the muscle cell can't process all of the broken down sugar molecules fast enough. This causes lactic acid build up and makes you feel sore. Your body will burn extra calories until it processes all the broken down sugar and lactic acid. This is what causes the 24 hour extra calorie burn with hiit workouts.

If you workout at least every other day, you will keep on top of burning up sugar and reduce the need to store sugar in the fat cells. Your body will also shift towards maintaining its muscle glucose or sugar levels in anticipation of upcoming exercise. This can cue your body to pull sugars from fat cells vs. muscle cells. Incorporate weights into your hiit workouts to cue the maintenence of the muscle glucose.

Oh my! That turned out long. I hope that made sense. I absolutely loved learning this as it really helped me quit eating sugar. My workouts are so much more productive now too.