Monday, 3rd September

The school term is about to start, and with all of this comes a lot of rushing around chasing your tail.

The word “workout” may not happen for you this week, and if you expect me to agree with that statement, then you’re totally and absolutely wrong and making far too many excuses to yourself!

You need to schedule your workouts when it is possible for you to do them, there are 168 hours in every week, and 7 days, we have all have that time available to us, nobody gets more time than others!

Its how you use this time!

This is why morning workouts can be so valuable to you.

When you train early, the exercise part of your day is over, done, completed and taken care of! You may not like getting up early to start with, but the individuals who i do train and have done for many years, wouldn’t train any other time of day now, they now PREFER TO TRAIN EARLY, and often say that early is the best part of the day!

If you think you cannot get up that early to train, there is a simple solution, try getting to bed earlier the night before, that may help! I could never get up as early as i do if i didn’t get to bed early the night before, it simply couldn’t happen!!!

The people who schedule in their workouts NO MATTER WHAT are the ones i have greatest respect for. These are the people who without fail have the best results too! Not missing workouts will have a dramatic effect on your body, and its all good!

If you train most days, then this difficult school week will become far more tolerable too. Exercise is proven to effectively deal with stress very well so its a no brainer to include workouts most days of your week.

Less stress, less body fat, a stronger heart and leaner stronger body are all huge benefits impossible to ignore!! Schedule your workouts in today for the rest of the week!

Thursday, 30th August

To follow on from all of the positivity yesterday, its vital you practice this each and every day, and after just a few days your life WILL change.

Let’s get one thing straight, EVERY SINGLE PERSON i know get their moment of doubt in what they are doing, and sometimes different parts of every day.

The key is to try and keep crushing those doubts by carrying on with certainty in what you are doing. If you believe in what you are doing, then the key is to carry on with that belief until good things happen.

Those moments of doubt and indecision are the critical moments in deciding whether you’re ultimately going to be successful or not.

When i first started off in my career, there were countless times when i wondered whether i was doing was right, but the more practice and the more results i had, the more certain i became that what i was doing was going to work time and time again. This is what comes with plenty of experience, we all make mistakes sometimes but the more experience you develop, those mistakes should become less and less as long as you have done your research!

So if we trying to have a really big effect on our bodies through exercise and eating well, we had better start learning how to become positive every day. Exercise is one of the most positive things you can do, and if you are planning to do some form of exercise most days, then your chances of being a much more positive person should be pretty high.

So accept that you WILL get those moments of doubt and indecision, on whether you should show up for your workout, whether you should eat that high fat meal or not, whether you should have another heavy night on alcohol or not, whether you should go on a new faddy diet or not, whether you should listen to all of the magazines on how to get fit, all of these decisions and more will dictate on what kind of physical condition you get in!!!

Your future is shaped by everyday questions, what kind of future is dictated by your answers!

Wednesday, August 29th

The power of being positive about all areas of your life is probably the most productive thing you can do.

If you took this challenge on, and it is to be positive for the next seven days without fail, and ignore any negatives and if they do come up, then see the positive side of the situation! This is the big challenge!

If you do one or even three days, then this is not enough, you have to go the full seven days to see the biggest benefits, and to recondition yourself to a new way of looking at your life.

For example, you may have been on a diet in the past and done well initially, but when the first thing didnt go your way, you may have tended to get mad and panic, and go off on some king of eating binge, feeling sorry for yourself and seeing the very worst in the situation that came up.

This is common for lots of individuals who are trying to get into shape, and it can be quite a job to get that person’s mind straight and positive again after “falling off the wagon” so to speak. The good results are often ignored, instead the one blip is often magnified and highlighted, this is when confidence is totally lost.

If you can manage to have seven positive days and thoughts, then the negatives will be dealt with in their proper place, and not dwelled upon, this is the way it SHOULD be!! Most people spend far too much time “dwelling” and not enough time appreciating the positive situation with the training and their life, and conditioning your mind to seeing a different perspective is critical to becoming successful longer term.

Your mind is your most powerful muscle, and being far more positive will encourage you to take positive and decisive action which is always needed when you’re trying to make some major progress with your health and fitness!

Tuesday, 28th August

The great thing about doing my job is that I get to see progress on a daily basis, and some wonderful individual stories along the way!!

It could be from the individual who never thought they would be able to run ever in their life, and then starts developing the capacity to run all of a sudden, and its great to see their face when they achieve that!

It could be the lady who has dropped from size 24 all the way down to size 12, and has gone through an incredible journey to get there, and has developed so much as a person through all the courage and determination they have shown along the way.

It could be the person who contacts me in the first place, who says he or she has tried everything else and I am “his/her last resort”!!!

It could be the person who finally starts believing in themselves after years of lacking confidence in their ability, this is when outstanding progress can finally be reached because belief is such an important part in making all of this happen!!!

The stories are always moving fast and can often change on a daily basis, due to certain things happening in people’s lives all the time.

The key is how the individuals react and that’s what im there for, to help them through not only the good “lets celebrate the success” times to the rough times that could be very much classed as “stormy waters!”.

I like to be all about the big progress in terms of losing inches off your waist and hips, regulating blood pressure and strengthening one’s heart greatly, to paying attention to the seemingly “little things” that in the end contribute to this big picture more than anything else.

It’s the sum of the little things that will pull it all around for you, and make those great big goals you made when you first started finally happen!!!

Another productive week of opportunity has started for you so lets make it happen again!

Friday, 24th August

Snacks-calorie breakdown

Snacks are vitally important as we talked about a couple of days ago, to keep energy levels up, and to keep important nutrients coming in throughout the day. Your diet needs to be all about energy and getting your performance levels right up there!

 Here are some ideas on what you should eat and their calorific value.

Fresh fruit for energy-100g usually

Apple-50

Pear-64

Banana-95

Blueberries-30

Kiwi fruit-29

Plums-34

Grapes-60

Strawberries-27

Satsuma-23

Dried fruit-to cure a sweet tooth and good for you

Sultanas-138

Raisins-136

Figs-43

Apricots-29

Low-fat yoghurts-provide calcium and nice desserts

Natural low-fat-56

Whole milk-79

Low-fat fruit-90

Low fat fromage frais-58

Nuts-50g-for essential fats

Cashews-287

Brazils-341

Almonds-306

Walnuts-344

Pumpkin seeds-57

Sunflower-57

Mixed nuts chopped-304

Hazlenuts-325

 As you can see by this list, we are talking about good healthy natural foods that are going to do you the world of good!

Please throw out the other sugary snacks such as biscuits, crisps and chocolate, the fact that they are still in the house means that they will get eaten at some stage or another, so give them away to someone who will appreciate them!

Snacks have often been the area where i have seen a lot of individuals leave themselves down. We have talked about the usual suspects such as chocolate, crisps, biscuits but what about the ones with real hidden dangers?

I am talking about cereal bars, and these were highlighted in the news this week as containing much more saturated fat and refined sugars than even chocolate in some cases.

When you add all the chemicals that they put in that you have never even heard of, then you have a very destructive so called snack that is going to put body fat on, and give you a lot of useless energy that is unusable by the body.

Eat natural and this means eating well