Men's Health Australia April 2021

RESET * I first started working out properly at the age of 16. And yes, it was to impress a girl. It took six months of solid training to shed 10 kilos. I felt more confident, my studies improved and I got the girl. While that relationship lasted only a swift three dates, with little more than a cheeky hand-hold at the train station after school, in the process I did manage to find my true life partner: fitness. Since that time, I’ve trained almost every day of my life. There were the occasional days off, sure – days spent in transit, perhaps a bad case of the flu or the day following a particularly brutal break-up. For the most part, however, nothing gets in the way of at least 45 mins…

My weight-loss efforts are messing with my sleep. Any knockout tips? – kw ★ It’s a nightmarish scenario: you stave off cravings from dawn to dusk, only to be rewarded with a night of broken sleep. Not only will you struggle to recover properly from yesterday’s workout, but your sleep deprivation causes the hunger hormone ghrelin to surge, making another day of sticking to the meal plan all the more difficult. If you want to put this problem to bed for good, you need to wake up to your diet’s deficiencies. As nutritionist and weight-loss consultant Kim Pearson explains: “If you suddenly slash your daily calorie count too far, your blood-sugar levels will plummet at night. And to stop them from dropping more, your body releases stress hormone cortisol. That’s what jolts…

The open relationship: are any women really on board and how would I broach the subject? -JY Lizza Oh, my God. My first serious boyfriend was all for open relationships because he believed humans aren’t built for monogamy. And I was like, there’s no f*cking way I’m going to be in a relationship with someone who wants to see other people, because I get too jealous. Anyway, we broke up. Years later, he gets married at Burning Man. They got married at Burning Man and they’re in an open relationship. Lucy Dude, you dodged a bullet. Lizza The thing is, though, we stayed in contact as friends and he would tell me about his relationship, and by the sounds of it she was totally up for it. He told me she had another…

YOUR MONTHLY DOWNLOAD OF THE LATEST LIFE ENHANCING RESEARCH THOUGH WE ALL KNOW that spending time outdoors is good for you, it’s long been hard to explain exactly why. To settle the matter, researchers at Nippon Medical School have dug up rock-solid evidence of how natural surroundings can benefit your health. In an initial study, the researchers observed that ambling in leafy environments reduces stress and blood pressure far more effectively than walks in urban settings. For anyone who has dodged traffic and battled through the 5pm scrum in our CBDs, that will hardly be a surprise. But the study goes further. While examining the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku (a phrase that roughly translates as “forest bathing”), the researchers noticed that there were lower rates of cancer in more densely forested regions. Even…

THE IDEA of taking 10,000 steps per day gets a lot of stick. Is it essential for good health, or is it just an arbitrary goal? The truth is that it depends. If you’re working out three or four times per week, the extra steps are a bonus but far from game-changing. The problem is that many struggle to hit even moderate levels of consistent physical activity. If that’s you, giving yourself a manageable step target can be a lifesaver. Researchers in the US followed the exercise habits of a group of over-40s for a decade and found that cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of death among the participants. For those walking an average number of steps per day (about 4000, both in the US and UK), heart problems posed…

HARD-CORE CARDIO is a proven strategy for those chasing a leaner physique – after all, you’ll burn a lot more kilojoules on the treadmill or running track than you will pumping iron. But there’s a smart, biological reason not to stray too far from the weights rack anytime soon, as epidemiologists at Harvard have demonstrated. They analysed data gathered from 10,500 middle-aged men over the course of 12 years, hoping to discover how different types of physical activity affect waist measurements as we age. The participants’ waists grew by an average of 6.6cm during the study period, but that increase was halved by regular weight training, regardless of aerobic activity levels. The researchers calculated that if the group had swapped 30 minutes of daily cardio training for resistance work, they would…