Posted on

March 15th 2011

The little decisions we have to make every day with food and exercise are put into context by our one big decision.

That one big decision is the one when you first started to workout and eat much better.

It could have been down to you being fed up with the way you looked and felt, it could have been because you were always teased about your weight, if you are a man, you may have been teased about being so skinny and weak, you may have always wanted to take part in a sporting event such as a 10k run or maybe a marathon.

Whatever it may have been, its time to remember that feeling all over again when it comes to your workouts and the way you shop for food.

If you’re buying chicken for example for you weekly eating at home, it really is not acceptable to have processed chicken with lots of additives all over it.

There was one such example this week when I saw that gentleman Levi Roots of reggae reggae sauce fame promoting frozen chicken. He was promoting the most pitiful small piece of chicken you have ever seen, and it was filled with additives and sauces you would never recognise the ingredients of!!! This was £2.20-2.50, and could maybe last one serving and that’s it.

Not only was it not any good for you, it wouldn’t even fill you up properly!!!

Compare that with buying a whole chicken to cook for around £3-4 or even a ready cooked one for up to £5 and you have many different meal options, as well as being very healthy as long as you strip off the skin of course.

These are the decisions that need to be made time after time to make sure you’re going to be in great shape. If you put in rubbish, then , you’re not going to look or feel good full stop. Its time to have a good hard think next time you’re buying all these examples of food, I call them examples because they are not proper food and they are not going to serve you well!!!

Eat natural, eat fresh where possible and keep filling your body with high nutrient, high energy food that is going to take you where you want to go!!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 14th

Another nice week of weather to get you into it, and make your summer promises you made to yourself happen.

Fat burning workouts need to keep happening, and forget staying on stepper’s in the gym for 2 hours to enable you to make that happen. It may say “fat burning” on the machine but it really doesn’t mean thats going to happen at all.

The myth that you need to do cardio to burn fat and use weights to build needs to exploded and kicked into touch for good. That way of thinking in unacceptable and will lead to mediocre results, even after a lot of time spent in the gym. Using resistance/weights in your programme is essential, vital, hugely important, whatever important term you want to use, you can use it so i can’t over estimate it!!!!

Everyone who wants to get into a programme always thinks bike, treadmill and stepper, and sometimes rower, and then settle on whatever they feel most comfortable on, and that usually means what they put the least amount of work into. Its common to walk into some gyms and see the same old people hogging the same old machines, nothing different ever gets tried!!! A sweat may be achieved but doing something different may be a swear word for some!!!

You know by now im a big advocate of working in a circuit style, and i don’t mean drop the weight so low that the workout becomes some kind of pathetic pandsy type of workout that you never get out of breath, this type of cop out is really no acceptable.

You need to work with weights that cause you discomfort especially when it comes to the  7th or 8th rep, so you are actually working hard, and not going through the motions, which is the worst way to train and guarantee mediocrity of the highest order!!!!

You need a good circuit in your life, think 6-8 exercises done for 3 sets and 8 reps per exercise, follow this and you’re going to be getting the results you really dreamed of!!

example-press ups or bench presses

arm dips using bench or chair

alternate squat thrusts

lateral raises

lat pulldowns

curls with dumbbells

plank-aim for one minute eventually

See how you get on and WORK HARD!!!

Keri

Twitt
Posted on

March 11th Supermarket shop

Hope you are having a stronger end to the week and if you are in the majority, you will be doing your weekly shop in the supermarket either today, yesterday or tomorrow.

Are you improving in this area or not? Do u visit only the healthy aisles of the supermarket or are you doing down every aisle such as the chocolate and crisps part, the ready meals part, the alcohol part, and savoury part etc?

The important parts of the supermarket remain the fruit and vegetables to start, depending on how it is laid out.

Here you can get your apples, oranges, blueberries, pears, bananas, broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, jacket potatoes, new potatoes, tomatoes, etc etc. These are the foods that need to be in your diet every single day to look after your body inside and out, fight disease and give you plenty of energy.

Next you probably come to the lean meats such as chicken, turkey, lean beef, lean steaks, lean mince etc, its important to make the right choices here. You can have some red meat, but don’t plan on eating it more than once a week, the health dangers have been well documented in the press lately again so a bit mof moderation is called for here. The lean meats though can form an excellent foundation for your diet.

You may next see some fish, im talking tuna, mackerel, haddock, trout, salmon is always a favourite of mine and you can get all of these either fresh or in a tin, nothing wrong with either in my book and depends on how much you have to spend.

How about some carbs? We mentioned potatoes earlier, but next we have brown rice, wild rice, wholegrain and wholewheat pasta, there are all types of spaghetti and variations (keep it to wholegrain if possible). While we are talking about wholegrain and wholewheat, you can and should apply this to everything and you know i mentioned wholewheat pancakes earlier in the week.

Bread is a big subject for many of you so lets keep it wholemeal if possible, the slower release of energy the better and you want to avoid white bread like the plague, full of bleach, sugar and other cooking agents that you really don’t want to be putting in your body.

Then there’s nuts such as brazils, almonds, cashews, walnuts, hazlenuts etc which are excellent along with dried fruit such as dates, apricots, raisins, figs, prunes which can work as excellent snacks or food sweeteners in a natural way!!

Hows that for a start and making your week go along without too many hiccups, more like plenty of energy and making sure you stay lean and energetic!!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 10th

Making a big difference to your physique involves changing your programme every 6 weeks and certainly 12 weeks.

The same can happen with your food. Just because you change your food around, it doesn’t have to mean you change your diet from one faddy diet to another either, it just means exploring different foods, different recipes and a willingness to test your taste buds in different ways.

For example, I was talking to somebody yesterday who was on a very well known diet some of you have mentioned before.

She said that she wasn’t allowed two weetabix and milk on one particular day, as well she wasn’t allowed beans on wholemeal toast another day, what RUBBISH!!!!!!!! This is madness of the highest order and please don’t tell me that you have paid for all of this rubbish?

The lady in question quickly went back to her tried and tested way of eating of if its healthy, then its going to be good for you. You cannot go wrong this way.

You also cannot go wrong if you have followed this healthy way of eating all week, and if you want to sample an occasional treat the weekend, then there’s no problem at all? You have worked hard and well at your food all week and you deserve a treat here and there, as long as its not a whole gateau for example!!!

There was another good sign yesterday, a 12 year old I have been training with some weight to lose and was addicted to sugary/fatty foods has now made great strides with his eating and training, and is looking now like a much healthier version of himself, and hes much happier for it too.

The test yesterday came with his pancakes, for the first time yesterday he had NO SUGAR on his pancakes, because he didn’t feel the need to. Another positive was that he said the pancakes didn’t taste half as good as they used to, because his taste buds have changed and sugar is not a major part of his life anymore!!!

I had some pancakes too, made with wholemeal and stonegrain flour, 2 eggs, nearly a pint of milk and they were delicious. NO SUGAR, NO BUTTER AND NO SALT. If you think that is horrible, perhaps you are still addicted to sugar and not getting the results you want?

Time to change!

Twitt
Posted on

March 9th

A lot of people are confused when they burn body fat, and a common question is are you burning fat every time you sweat?

Sweating is your body’s own cooling system and a lot of people in good shape will sweat regularly, and their bodies will be used to regulating heat in the body, if someone for example trainins 5-6 a week, then their body is used to working out and their body’s internal system will sweat to cool it down, and regulate its internal temperature. So this is sweating in a good way and with someone very fit, it can take a lot of work to get this happening. When you think about it though, that individual is only very fit in the first place BECAUSE they exercise  with real intensity all the time, so they will be used to tougher, more intense workouts.

On the other hand then, you may have someone who is totally not conditioned very well, and will sweat at the slightest physical efforts. It may not take much to get someone out of shape sweating but it doesn’t then mean that they are suddenly burning lots of body fat straight away. There are other factors at play, and if that person has consumed a lot of food that day before training, they will be busy burning the excess calories before they even touch their body fat.

The bottom line never changes, whatever stage you are at, you should build your training up in terms of intensity and take some time to do it. As long as you are making small even subtle changes each week, then you will be on course for ultimate success.

So the sweating thing as a measure of burning fat is not always accurate and there are too many variables to take into consideration. However, if you have at least a couple of months training under your belt, you will sweat normally every time you train intensely and even more so when you have made progress from the week before, a harder workout will always test you,  make you sweat and always improve you in terms of reducing body fat, heart rate and making your body overall leaner and harder.

Twitt