Keri McKibbin Personal Training

One of the key basics is your weekly shop of course.

I have banged on about this for a long time. As long as 80% of your shopping is good nutritious food, then you are in a good situation. After all, how many tmes have you bought sugary/fatty foods and promised yourself you’re only going to eat them on “special occasions”?!!

Those special occasions happen quite a lot in my book and its always surprising how quickly all those extra treats are gulped down in record time!

I keep telling everyone, if you are REALLY shopping for healthy food and get used to the supermarket layout, chances are you wont visit many of the aisles, as most of them are full of you know what! It shows the supermarket really bets on most of its visitors filling up on junk, and how many times have you looked at someone’s basket and how many clues does that give to the owner’s appearance and body in general.

If a shopping basket/trolley is full of white bread, biscuits, multi-pack chocolate bars, value packs of crisps (around 10 packs in one big bag), bottles of wine and lager, full fat milk, not much veg or fruit, lots of orange squash, lots of ready meals and other processed versions of real food, you get the picture!! If this is indeed the case, you can be sure the owner of this trolley and most likely their family is suffering from obesity issues, which include diabetes, blood pressure problems, cardiovascular problems, bad circulation and a whole host of life-changing problems.

Compare this to someone who has a trolley full of porridge, low fat low sugar beans, fish of all kinds (no batter), chicken, turkey, lean beef, cottage cheese, lots of fruit and vegetables, wholegrain pasta, brown rice, sweet, jacket and new potatoes,  all the good stuff guaranteed to make you look and feel fantastic.

Put your treats in if you must, but 80% plus of the trolley needs to be good nutritious food, hugely important to get in the habit of this and not to be sidetracked into the aisles full of junk!

You all have worked hard for your money, spend it on food thats actually going to make you feel good and help you reach all your goals!

Its more important than you think to have a snack before exercise.

We are all a bit different and react that bit different to all sorts of foods, so working out what best food choice for you and agrees with you is always important.

Whole grains, lower far dairy or fruits will always work well for you as a stop gap for your workouts and give you some energy for your tougher workouts through the summer.

Try eating these snacks if you can at least 30 minutes before exercise to make sure your food goes down properly, and your food is ready to release energy into your system.

The 30 minute rule applies to smaller snacks, if you were to eat a big meal before training, you may need 90 mins to 2 hours before your workout.

I find some people have better digestive systems than others. I find i can eat and literally then go for a run. I could probably do a big meal and exercise 30-60 minutes later, but that took a lot of getting used to because i tend to eat on the run throughout the day, and took me years to get used to that because of my lifestyle.

If you stick to the guidelines i first mentioned, you shouldn’t really go wrong.

I used to try the no food strategy before a workout because i thought i may feel sick. This was a stupid strategy because i would always then fail towards the second half of the workout, due to lack of carbohydrates left in my system. I avoided the sickness for sure, but it wasn’t worth losing all that energy.

You will find also that if you don’t have food before workouts and you have no carbs in your system, then your body will use precious lean muscle tissue already on your body. This can be a disaster because you have worked so hard to get in the first place, as well as muscle being so important for your metabolic rate (the rate your body burns calories). The last thing you want is to slow down your metabolism, so lets keep getting your snacks in every 3-4 hours and really make this thing happen for you!

Not eating before exercise is bad news full stop, just like the idea of not eating breakfast, any time your body goes long periods without food, its goes into starvation mode and stops burning fat so easily.

Keeping your weekly eating well-structured and full of nutrients is the only way to go if you want the best out of yourself.

Dieting is never a good word to use, as it scares the hell out of most of us. It’s often associated with going hungry, so feeling full is one of the best strategies you can take on to make the whole process of losing fat tolerable!

Most of your hunger pangs and cravings happen in your mind, and not your body’s sudden urge to consume huge amounts of food. Watching TV is a good way to get hungry and snack on things you know you shouldn’t!

The best way not to make rash decisions with your food intake is not to get so hungry in the first place.

Ways to stay fuller start with water intake believe it or not, not only does it burn body fat and make your insides work well, it also makes you feel full.

Eating fibre makes you feel full too as it takes a while before it gets through your system. You also get better cholesterol, better blood sugar levels and better intestinal health, an all round winner of a strategy!

What about times when you get uncontrollable urges to eat  kebab, ice cream, chocolate etc? You need an emergency low-fat stash of healthy snacks to counter this, or your whole diet is going to come off the rails! I know some people who keep emergency snacks but they’re usually chocolate! If you keep chocolate in the house as an emergency, you’re going to have that “emergency” once a day so don’t buy them in the first place.

Healthy snacks include nuts, any fruit, lean pieces of beef, chicken, turkey and the occasional protein bar.

Other ways to avoid hunger bangs include staying busy, if you just hang around watching tv, you’re going to struggle big time, do something and you don’t think about food.

Eating at regular times will always help, if you know that a meal or snack is just around the corner, you’re not going to be looking to grab food in a haphzard way. Plus, you keep your blood sugar levels steady which is always good.

Don’t forget sweeter, sugary foods can re-ingnite your sugary taste buds, making you want more and more and this creates new “bad” habits!

Exercise doesn’t only burn calories, it suppresses appetite too to a degree so you’re not feeling hungry all the time.

Keep your protein intake up, eating protein in most meals fill you up, and helps keep you lean and your desire for sugary foods way down.

Staying full is vitally important, and help you make the consistent good choices you need to be in shape!

One of the biggest transitions you can do is make the difference in thinking about purely weight, and thinking about your health overall.

If you purely think about weight, then healthy food can sometimes take a backseat and it doesn’t seem to matter what the quality of food is.

I have seen a ton of people eat things because they are “only 80 calories”, they will only drink things because they are only 80 calories. The next time you do that i challenge you to do this, count how many ingredients there are in that drink. I’m serious, you would have a tough job writing them all out in one go as its such a lengthy list! PLUS it does a very good job of representing a chemistry experiment, just about everything artificial you can think of is thrown in there!!!

Another way to look at it is the energy value in foods.

For instance, things such as green veggies, fruit and nuts will have a greater energy than processed foods, which are lower in calories of course but not so good for your stomach, and interal workings. These foods were put on earth for a reason,so you need to take advantage of them!

Nobody i know wants to feel terrible all the time, and if that is the case with you at the moment, do you even believe that life could feel better than it is right now? A massive part of this is to enable you to feel better and the facts are that whatever you put into your mouth will have a direct effect on how you look  and feel, its that simple for you so you take your choice on where you want to be!

Making your goals become real all start with looking after your insides, and although it could be a sizeable change for many of you right now, once your eating habits do change, even though it will be a struggle to start with, you WILL feel better inside, and as i keep saying, you will feel a lot better when you get it right from the inside out.

The biggest transition i made was saying to myself “is this piece of food going to any good for me”? Once you get to this stage and are very aware of your nutrition, life will be more full of energy and your immune system gets some serious boosting!

Your amazing food shopping list!

All of these foods will serve you well, and leave no shortage of ingredients for you to cook healthy meals. As long as you eat well 80% of the time, then you will be in great shape, and keep your sanity! A treat here and there is no problem when you use this philosophy.

Meat and fish

Anchovy fillets

Chicken breast

Haddock

Mackerel

Prawns

Salmon, fresh fillets and cans

Smoked salmon

Scallops

Squid

Swordfish

Tuna, fresh and canned

White fish fillets

Dairy

Free range eggs

Goat’s cheese (soft and hard)

Milk

Parmesan cheese

Tofu

Live natural yoghurt

Vegetables

Aubergines

Avocados

Beansprouts

Baby beetroot

Broccoli

Green cabbage, green red and white

Carrots

Celeriac

Celery

Chinese leaves

Corn, baby cobs

Courgettes

Cucumbers

Fennel

Garlic

Green beans

Leeks

Lettuce

Mangetout

Mixed salad leaves

Mushrooms

Red and yellow onions

Parsnips

Frozen peas

 Red yellow and green peppers

Red chillies

Rocket

Shallots

Spinach

Sprint onions

Sprouted seeds

Butternut squash

Swedes

Sweet potatoes

Tomatoes

Watercress

Fruit

Apples

Apricots

Blackberries

Blueberries

Grapefruit

Kiwi fruit

Lemons

Limes

Oranges

Pears

Raspberries

Nuts and seeds

Cashew nuts

Hazelnuts

Linseeds

Pine nuts

Pumpkin seeds

Sesame seeds

Sunflower seeds

Walnuts

Pulses

All canned

Butter beans

Cannellini beans

Chick peas

 Flageolet beans

Lentils

Mixed beans

Mung beans (dried)

Red kidney beans

Spilt yellow lentils (dried)

Split yellow peas (dried)

Grains and wheat

Brown rice

Buckwheat flour

Buckwheat noodles

Couscous

Millet flakes

Oats

Quinoa

Rye/wholegrain, wholemeal bread

Herbs

Basil

Bay leaves

Chives

Coriander

Dill

Fennel

Lemon grass

Marjoram

Mint

Mixed herbs, dried

Oregano, dried

Parsely

Rosemary

Sage

Thyme

Spices

Black pepper

Caraway seeds

Cardamom pads

Cayenne

Chilli paste

Chilli powder

Cinnamon, ground

Cloves

Coriander seeds

Cumin seeds

Curry leaves

Curry paste

Curry powder

Fennel seeds

Fresh ginger

Ginger powder

Mango powder

Mustard seed

Nutmeg

Onion powder

Paprika

Poppu seeds

Star anise

Turmeric

Oils

Avocado oil

Olive oil

Sesame oil

Walnut oil

 

As previously discussed, handy and essentials for your storecupboard

Anchovy essence

Black olives

Carrot juice

Coconut, creamed

Coconut, milk

Honey

Horseradish sauce

Mixed vegetable juice

Mustard, Dijon

Mustard, wholegrain

Peppers in olive oil

Ratatouille, canned

Soy sauce

Stock, fish

Stock, vegetable

Stock powder

Sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil

Hopefully, you will find all of this useful!

As we went through some essentials yesterday, we all know my opinion of faddy diets, but what really happens to your body and what is the “cost” to your body? Please consult with a respected doctor if you doubt any of this!

Most “diets” are low in calories so WHAT do they say that they are going to do for you?

These faddy diets encourage you to eat a diet entirely based on calories, and if you eat fewer calories than you use, you will somehow use fat as energy and that’s how you lose weight. Your body is a bit more clever than that according to scientists, and doesn’t just respond to counting calories. How many of you out there have been on kind of a starvation mode and still couldn’t lose weight, it does happen to many after a few weeks of eating like this you tell me!

The nasty effects of eating this way!

You avoid the essential fats that we talk about a lot on here that are vital for great health. Faddy diets encourage you to avoid these foods as they are somehow “fattening”! How wrong can you get! This advice should be banned!

You measure food just as a calorie, and therefore healthy food doesn’t really matter. Poor food choices which are harmful to your health in the long term count the same as far more healthy choices, very poor education again by the faddy diet “experts”.

When you keep denying yourself food, your rate of calorie burning (metabolism) slows down, and that’s what makes your diet eventually crash and burn. And when you return to eating your normal food, your body is still in starvation mode so will not only put your weight back on, but will more on more than when you first started, a nightmare scenario!

What about the very high protein diet?

This diet that severely limits your carbs always encourages you to eat all fat and all protein for a while. Then, a little carbs come in later. Let me say that weight loss can be very big in the first couple of weeks of this programme, which encourages people to stay in the all protein all fat stage!

The nasty side effects and negatives!

If you stay on this diet for the long term, you will be avoiding fibre, which leads to constipation and increased the risk of colon cancer.

If you don’t take in your fruit and veg, the risk of cancer, heart disease and arthritis goes up significantly.

When you take in all fats, and in particular saturated fats, you can develop cholesterol problems and heart disease.

Limiting carbs also discourages you eating your five a day of fruit and veg, always a bad idea!

An eating for life plan that discourages starvation methods, going without food for long periods, and counting calories works every time. You don’t cut out whole food groups and you have a healthy balance of foods in your life. Common sense actually works, so don’t be fooled by the charlatans ripping you off with the latest faddy diets that are all around us each day!

The benefits!!

You will be developing great health because you have balanced nutrition.

Eating little and often every 3-4 hours keeps your metabolism revved and stops you from going hungry, and stops willpower becoming the all important factor!

Eating enough fruit and veg makes sure you are in great health, fibre and energy to live the life you want to.

This is a simple plan for life  that works, there is no deadline and it doesn’t encourage you to avoid your treats completely, a bit of what you fancy is good for you now and again and keeps you sane!

Eating healthy and essential fats is actually GOOD for you, fish, nuts etc work for you every time if you let them!

I keep giving you choices every day, mine are actually based on science. The rest you hear are often “heresay” or “made up” to take your money and sound different or just plain dangerous.

Let’s have a great day and make the most of your body this week!

Here’s a subject you have heard me bang on about a few times. So i’m not going to break the habit, let’s look at it again!

Eating well shouldn’t be that hard, you know if you eat an apple, a piece of chicken, a piece of fish, brown rice, a potato, a carrot, porridge etc, you know you are eating well and you’re not having any refined sugar. Are you still confused about eating well or do you need more education about eating well? I think all of us need to educate ourselves from time to time, and remind ourselves of what can really be destroying our fat loss plans!

Tracking sugar is the hardest thing for most people, and food companies go out of their way to hide it in your foods. Let’s face it, sugar tastes nice and can be addictive, and will sometimes totally put you off eating plainer, natural foods full of nutrients. You will naturally crave more of the sugary foods, so the food company will win all round, as they know you will come back every time for their sugar-laced products, and the products range from everything, from so called healther cereals, to sliced ham’s, to sugary drinks dressed up as orange juice.

So how do these food companies hide their sugar in the foods they produce? They have to list the ingredients that are the biggest portions of the product first, and work the way down to the smallest additive.  Sugar in its plainest form will be sugar or sucrose. Then it gets pretty sly on the sugary ingredients. Fructose, corn syrup, glucose, honey, cane juice crystals, rice syrup, molassses, caramel, cane sugar, fruit juice, inverted sugar are just a few of the ways addictive calories are added to your food and derail your diet, and your body’s performance!

Most cereals in the supermarket are great examples of these additives, and many of the most popular ones have some or all of these ingredients. They create your cravings for sugar, and this will transfer to other food groups too, before you know you will be ingesting an awful lot of needless sugar in just one day. Have you ever got used to eating like this and then you’ve been on it so long that you accuse anyone who eats plainer, more wholesesome foods as “boring”, i know i’ve been accused of that a few times!! Eating all of these sugary foods every day doesn’t make you the life and soul of the party either!! It’s time to get all this rubbish out of your life and right now if you want to make some serious progress and quickly, let’s sort it out now!!

The more sugar you take in, the more you’re going to want more. The average person in this country and the US takes in 20 to 25 teaspoons of sugar per day, directly or indirectly. This alone will add up to 40 pounds of body fat increase per year, so up to you?

The sooner you make your commitment to eating more natural foods the better, if it’s man made, you know it’s nearly always a disaster for your body! Think about it and let’s make it happen this week.

Keri

Ways to make sure you are not consuming extra calories would be the following;

1. Eating while you’re going things. If you eat while you are on the phone, on the computer or just watching TV, your normal (i’m full signals) feelings of knowing when you’re full are not recognized. This is an easy way of eating more calories than you should. A simple way of rectifying this is to go back to basics, eating by the kitchen table will focus yourself on the meal again, and you will not overeat, and your brain will recognise those all important “i’m full” signals.

2. Are you still in the low-fat culture. You may believe that foods are low in fat, so you can eat as much as you want of them. Portion control is still relevant to keep your calories sensible, and what about the extra calories in these so called low-fat meals. Remember what i always say about sugar, and that frosties are a “low-fat” food! Don’t just look at the saturated fat, check your sugar intake! No more than 40g of refined sugar a day please.

3. How big are your plates? I go in many different houses, and most of their plate sizes are different. If you serve your food on huge plates, your will most likely be overeating. Scale them down and buy some smaller plates. It will be tough for the first week but you will soon get used to your new portion size, which will be much healthier and help with fat-loss too!

4. Keep the excess christmas stuff out the way, or better still throw it out! We have all been there, it’s there in front of us so we pick on it all day long because “it’s there”! This continues into the new year because we are keeping our sugary taste buds satisfied for rich food. The sooner you throw it out in the rubbish and buy some good food in, the sooner you get back to normal and get back in shape (and feel better)!!

5. Use your taller glasses for orange/apple juice. I have a thick rounded glass in the house and believe it or not it’s a pint glass! It only looks like half a pint honestly! The taller glassed meanwhile can look good but contain less, plus remember to dillute those juices with water, which means you consume less sugar and calories.

Have a go at these and see if they help!

Keri

Let’s be honest, we are all tempted over christmas, and all of us will have something we fancy, and sugary and fatty. How much of it will dictate how we feel, how hard it will be  in the new year to get it off, and how long it will take to get our taste buds back to normal again.

Cyril made an interesting post but one thing came shing through from all of what he said and we should learn from him. It was why he was making bad choices again. He was struggling because he wasn’t taking action on his bad food choices, he was talking about it but wasn’t doing anything about it despite trying hard.  Cyril will get back on track straight away but the great positive is that he knows where he is going wrong. How many of us know where we are going wrong in life? Most of us follow blind alleys at times, and don’t know where going wrong until obviously the result is not what we want, then we clearly must change to achieve a result we have been searching for.

The empty calories we have all around us, the mince pies, the beer, the wine, the cakes, the party food, the sugar coated anything, the pastries etc etc, they are all there to be eaten and they act as magnets in our times of weakness. Then one bad day leads to another and before we know it, the weight has piled on, we feel like garbage and we have the energy of a sloth, and a tight chest for some reason and the thought of exercising again sounds better “next week”!

My advice over christmas would be try to do something most days, even a nice walk would be fantastic, just to keep those lungs in shape. Some of you will do more, and well done on that, you will feel better and start 2010 with a bang! The magnetism of those empty calories can be very strong, so start as you mean to go on, keep eating plenty of the lowest fat meat out there in turkey, eat lots of veggies, have something of what you fancy as its christmas after all, and make a genuine promise to yourself that you’re not going to pile all of that weight on this year again, because it could easily be march before you get it off! Most diets end on valentine’s day and if you do your indulgence in moderation, you won’t need any faddy diet that’s doomed for failure again.

We have plenty of eating and traing stuff coming up so let’s really understand why this year is going to be different for you all, and you’re far more in control of it than you think!

Keri

Another typical pattern this time of year, and its about to get a LOT colder tomorrow, is seeking comfort in carbohydrates. Absolutely nothing wrong with carbohydrates, as long as they are served in moderation. How many of us have restricted our bread to 2-4 slices a day, or even no bread in a day, and then introduced it, perhaps a really nice loaf from a bakery and couldn’t stop eating it once we got over 4 slices?! Then the habit gets continued day after day, and this really goes well in a pasta story, where you make a big bowl full that’s supposed to last until tomorrow, but you nearly eat it all in go? The same with jacket potatoes and just about anything thats full of carbs, and dying to be eaten in excess!!! As has been documented in previous stories, i had a huge pizza appetite myself once upon a time!

The way to get around all of this is get some idea on portion size. If you think of carb portions as the size of your fist, you shouldn’t really overeat, and the same with your protein portions as i have mentioned many times before. Your veggies can be any size, as long as its plentiful for you. If you stick to these rules, you will find your portion control had literally “gone out of control” and you may have been putting on weight at a rate of knots. So carbs aren’t the bad guys, eat too much of anything and you will pile on the weight, and your appetite WILL accomodate it believe me, so time to get that appetite down to healthy levels again maybe?

Juts a quick note on the atkins diet, of course it worked for weight loss but you could never eat like that for life could you? Plus the negative side effects that were numerous. May be the reason why the atkins product range went out of business, people loved their carbs too much, and as long as you keep those carbs in moderation, you can enjoythe great taste every day and fuel yourself up for great workouts. If you eat too much of anything, you will be overweight, simple as that unless you have some kind of tour de france type calorie needs!

Have a good one and watch the cold the next few days, BUT IT WILL BE DRY so no excuses!

Keri