Working Out With a Cold

At this point, the question of whether you can do your workout program is likely one of the first things running through your mind.

Should you force yourself up and get in that workout, hoping that it will make you feel better, or should you stay in bed, rest up, and pray that you’re feeling up to it tomorrow?

The general rule for whether you can workout when you have a cold is to take a look at your symptoms. If the symptoms tend to be neck up only, that is you have a stuffy noise and a sore throat, then yes, working out at this point likely is going to be alright and you may just find that it does help you feel better.

But if your symptoms are neck down and your body aches, you feel out of balance, and you’re dizzy upon standing, then it’s time to crawl right back into bed where you belong. Going to the gym when you feel like this is just an all around bad idea because not only could you actually put yourself in danger since you’re out of balance and dizzy, but you likely won’t have anywhere near a good workout anyway.

So in that instance, rest and up and hit the gym when you’re closer to 100%. The stress from the workout will likely be a little too much for your body to deal with on top of the stress from the cold, so you don’t want to take things too far.

By keeping this simple trick in mind, you can quickly determine whether that gym session is a smart move or not.

Many people will let this plateau cause them to move right off their workout program entirely, losing hope that they’ll ever be able to reach their goal weight.

Don’t let this happen to you. Instead, stay rational and think about what you can do to get past it.

How is Your Calorie Intake?

First, be honest about your calorie intake. Are you sneaking in food where you shouldn’t be? Do you often take a few bites of your child’s left over sandwich while making dinner? Sneak a few crackers from the pantry while up between commercials?

If you’re not adding up your calories correctly, this very well could be wise you aren’t losing weight.

Mix Up Your Workouts

Second, change around those workout sessions. Remember, your body will adapt to any exercise you start to perform, so if enough time passes and you aren’t doing anything new to further challenge it, all progress will stop.

Either add some new exercises, add more weight, change the rep or set range, or try a brand new workout program entirely.

Take A Break

Finally, the last thing to consider is taking a break from the diet. Sometimes this is necessary to get weight loss moving along. Whenever you put yourself on a reduced calorie intake your metabolism will slow down slightly, so over time this could cause weight loss to stop.

By taking a short break from your diet, you ‘reset’ the body’s hormones so that your metabolism starts running full speed again and therefore jumpstart your results when you move back down to the diet plan.

So next time you hit a weight loss plateau, consider these three things. Remember that diet is just as important as workouts are in terms of weight loss so be sure to evaluate both components together.

This can be quite discouraging for some, and they’ll start to make it their mission to do whatever it takes to develop muscle soreness.

Muscle Soreness and Workouts

What you must remember with this question however is that muscle soreness doesn’t always mean you’ve put in a hard workout. Muscle soreness comes about most whenever the body is exposed to some type of brand new stress, where it’s learning a new movement pathway.

For instance, whenever you try a brand new exercise that you haven’t done before, you’re going to be much sorer in those muscles than in the muscles that were worked with an exercise you’ve been doing for years.

Likewise, if you take a full two weeks off your training and then just get back into it, your muscles are essentially ‘relearning’ the movement again, and thus you wake up the next morning hardly able to walk.

If you’re working out regularly though and are doing similar exercises in the gym that you always do – but just adding more weight or increasing the sets, it’s only normal and natural that you won’t be quite as sore.

Also keep in mind that your recovery techniques – stretching, nutrition, sleep, and overall rest will also influence soreness, so that could be playing a role as well.

So don’t let the fact that you aren’t sore make you think you didn’t have a good workout. You can have great workouts and not be sore in the least, but this doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress.

Instead, focus on intensity. When you’re working out at a very high intensity, that’s when you know you’re getting in a good workout.

But, when you’re rushing off on various business trips and are often spending hours on buses, planes, or in vehicles, not to mention staying in a hotel room, eating healthy proves to be quite the challenge.

If you plan for it though, you can still eat healthy, even when on the road.

Pack Non-perishable Items

First, you want to try and pack with you as many non-perishable healthy items as you can that you can keep right in your hotel room. This includes foods such as natural nut butter, nuts, dry oats, dried fruit (for those who require higher calorie intakes), canned tuna, low-sodium beef jerky, healthy cereals, protein powder, and meal replacement shakes.

These options will provide you with all three main macronutrient so you should never be without any healthy options.

Choose Healthy Dining Options

Then, when you are dining out in a restaurant, remember to choose as healthy as possible and don’t be afraid to make a few substitutions to the menu.

You could easily request for steamed vegetables rather than the side of rice or pasta, request that your salad come with dressing on the side, ask for no sauce for any other dishes that look like they’re loaded with high calorie sauces, and so on.

With small substitutions like this, you can save yourself hundreds of calories at a time, so this will go a long way towards helping you eat healthy when traveling. At most restaurants – even fast food locations, you’ll be able to get a grilled chicken breast, so if you can pair that with some vegetables or a salad, you’re eating pretty much as healthy as it gets. If you need more carbs, have some oatmeal back when you get to your room and you’ll be right on track with your normal diet plan.

Risks of Lifting Weights

But along with lifting weights comes a few risks. One of those risks being headaches.
Some people often do find that they experience headaches after they put in a hard session at the gym and the primary reason for this is due to the intensity.

Lifting weights is a very intense activity and is going to place a high stress load on the body, so if you’re lifting as much as you can and shortening up those rest periods to make the sessions even more intense yet, you may experience this post-workout headache from time to time.

If this is the case and it’s really starting to bother you, then the first thing to look at is your breathing. Are you breathing regularly throughout the exercises or are you holding your breath? This is quite common and that can cause even more pressure to build up in the body and can lead to the development of a headache.

Second, you may also want to consider decreasing the overall volume of the workout as well. If you’re doing multiple sets of each exercise and are doing more than five exercises per session, it may just be that your body can’t quite handle that much volume.

Backing off a bit would make it far more tolerable and allow you to complete the workouts without suffering from this head pain post-workout.

So keep these few points in mind. If it is an ongoing issue present each and every time and you’ve tried both of the above, then consulting a doctor may be a good decision to be sure there’s nothing else at play here.

But, what’s the real truth to this?

Losing Body Fat

Must you get up and exercise without eating first or are there really no advantages to doing so?
The main thing to remember here is that how much fat you lose at the end of the day will come down to how many calories you’ve taken in versus how many calories you’ve burned off. If you burn off more than you take in, you’ll lose body fat.

While you will start using body fat stores faster when working out on an empty stomach, if this causes you to have low energy levels throughout that workout, you’re likely not going to workout at the desired intensity and that will mean you burn fewer calories throughout the session.

Then, at the end of the day your total calorie burn will be lower, therefore it really won’t have been all that beneficial.

Exercising on Empty Stomach

Plus, you must remember that in order to perform high intensity exercise such as sprinting or weight lifting the body will require glucose for fuel, which only comes from carbohydrates eaten before the session, so by not eating before you go to workout, you’re limiting the type of exercise that you can perform.

So all in all, no, exercising on an empty stomach won’t really help you burn fat any faster. You’re far smarter to have a small snack consisting of both protein and carbohydrates, workout at a higher intensity so you can enhance your metabolism more, and experience faster overall fat loss at the end of the day because of it.

But if you’re someone who’s focused on your goal to build more muscle mass, you may have slightly conflicted feelings about whether you want to hit up the newest bar in town come Friday night with your friends.

What’s the impact on alcohol and building muscle?

The answer to this question is that alcohol will definitely influence muscle building, but the extent depends on how much you drink.

Each time alcohol enters your system, your body is essentially going to make getting it out a priority. It views it as a toxin and is going to do everything in its power to remove it from the body – before any other processes are completed.

This means that protein synthesis, which is the process of building up lean muscle mass, will come to an immediate halt, meaning you don’t build any further muscle.

So if you do a good workout Friday morning but then go drinking Friday night, you won’t be building up any more muscle that evening, or into Saturday if you’re still nursing a hangover and getting it out of your system.  If you have one drink, then likely this won’t take too long to clear, so the impact won’t be all that great, but you must ask yourself honestly, are you only having one drink?

The truth is clear. If you want to maximize muscle building, you need to minimize alcohol drinking. While the odd drink now and then won’t harm you too much, if you’re partying weekend after weekend, seeing great muscle building results may not be in your future.

But, is it really a wise idea to exercise seven days a week? Many people often wonder this since they’ve heard that you must take a full day off each week.

What’s the answer?

The important thing to remember with this one is that the body will essentially only get stronger when rest is given. When you’re in the gym each day, you’re actually just breaking your muscle tissues down, growing weaker in the process.

It’s when you’re outside of the gym resting that the real progress takes place. If you don’t give yourself sufficient rest, you’re never going to see the strength gains that should be occurring.

You may have a very well designed program where you are alternating between weight lifting and cardio sessions, but even still, remember that all exercise will still place a stress load on the nervous system and eventually, it can just become too much for it to recover from.

Overtraining

Overtraining is a very real and serious issue that will start to impact those who don’t give sufficient rest and recovery, which is why one day off is a very smart move.  Now, you don’t have to be completely lazy on this day off – a light walk around the block or a very easy bike ride outside for enjoyment’s sake will definitely be fine, but just avoid doing any intense physical activity.

If you do take this day off, you’ll find you come back to your workouts feeling better and be able to work even harder than you were before.

Protein Powders

The first thing to consider here is investing in a high quality whey protein powder, as that will go a long way towards helping you get more protein in. By adding one or two shakes during the day, you can easily bump up your protein intake closer to 25-50 grams, making it that much easier to meet your requirements.

Remember you can also add protein powder to many of the foods you’re eating as well, such as mixing it into a bowl of oatmeal, stirring it into yogurt or cottage cheese, adding it to your baked goods in replacement of some of the flour, or even mixing half a shake mixed with water into your coffee for a high protein mocha instead.

Protein Sources

Past protein powder, some other simple ways to get more protein include adding some cooked shrimps on top of your usual salad, making your oatmeal with skim milk rather than water, snacking on a can of tuna with a whole wheat tortilla rather than your usual energy bar, or making a fruit smoothie with some Greek yogurt, frozen fruit, and skim milk.

If you try and get a little more creative in the kitchen and look for little ways to add more meat, eggs, or dairy products into your usual meals, you’ll find that getting sufficient protein really isn’t all that difficult.

It would also be a good idea to consider preparing a big batch of grilled chicken breasts over the weekend and then freezing them for individual use as well as that will further help ease rushed meals during the week.

Getting your protein needs met is vital and with these tips, you should be well on your way to accomplishing that task.