Posted on

Wednesday, 22nd August

The power of snacking

Snacks are often an underrated part of your daily diet.

If you don’t snack, then you are likely to be underpowered in your workouts. This is bad news if you are interested in putting in good performances on a daily basis.

If you don’t snack, then the possibility of over-eating at traditional eating times goes way up. How many times have you not eaten from lunch time until evening time and then gone mad before your meal you had to make because you simply couldn’t wait for your main food!!

The problem is that when you are so hungry, you are likely to grab ANYTHING you can get your hands on, and most of the time whatever’s closest to hand in the fridge!

A cheese sandwich smash and grab is not unusual and can make you totally over eat the main meal. This all means a calorie avalanche at your last meal of the day and when you think about it, this is exactly the time when you are LEAST ACTIVE.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that when you over stuff yourself and don’t move around much, then this would be a prime time to put on body fat, exactly what we are not looking for!!!

If you took the time to snack, you would be eating in between major meals, instead of leaving up to six hours in between meals.

When you snack, this also stabilises blood sugar levels which stop the urge to eat in excess, and is great for avoiding the onset of diabetes, because you won’t have the wild blood sugar variations.

When you snack, you putting a constant energy supply into your body, and since hopefully exercise is a big part of your life, then a good energy supply is obviously vital! This will get you more fired up for workouts and you are likely to last much longer too!

This also encourages you to boost your metabolism, a constant supply of food makes your body think that it had better burn calories a bit quicker, raising your metabolic rate. Eating 5-6 times a day is far more efficient for your body, all you are doing is eating in smaller quantities come meal time, and spreading your food consumption out a lot further than trying to consume 3 huge meals, which doesn’t do a lot of good to your digestive system, that’s for sure.

See your food as fuel, and this will help your body become a furnace when it comes to fat-burning. When you throw in top quality workouts on top, then you have the perfect situation for getting into your best physical condition.

www.kerimckibbin.co.uk

fitness@kerimckibbin.co.uk

07968 980808

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 21st August

The science of losing body fat and performing at your best

If you don’t eat regular, then you will slow down the body fat burning process.

This happens because you put your body into starvation mode, meaning your body is likely to hang on to body fat, and start to eat into the lean muscle you have built up on your body, which further slows down your metabolism.

One pound of muscle tissue burns 35-50 calories a day, one pound of fat burns around 2, so you can see how leaner more muscular individuals stay lean, and overweight individuals stay that way until they start to exercise enough, weight train and not eat in excess of what they need.

No food lasts fully in your system for more than 4 hours, so if you eat every 3-4 hours, you will keep your energy supply constant, and this will also stop your blood sugar dropping, which means that you will not go hungry and not have the hunger pangs that will make you pig out on foods you don’t normally eat, or make you overeat in any one particular meal.

So if you’re eating breakfast, this is a vital start to kick off your metabolism for the day. If you don’t, then your body will stay in starvation mode and slow down your metabolism (the rate your body burns calories each day).

So its weetabix, shredded wheat, or porridge best of all for your start to the day with no sugar, use dried fruit as a sweetener.

You can have eggs on wholemeal toast with no butter. As you get rid of your sweet tooth, you will soon be able to try egg whites, which mean you avoid the saturated fat of the yolk. Whole eggs are still fine though.

Try a mid-morning snack 3 hours later with one or two pieces of fruit perfect to keep energy supplies good, or try some cottage cheese (onion and chives flavoured as an example) on one piece of wholemeal toast.

Lunch would be chicken/turkey/lean beef or any fish as long as its not in sauce or battered. Try and include vegetables with lunch and a good carbohydrate source such as brown rice, wholegrain pasta or new/sweet potatoes.

If you have a packed lunch, use pitta breads with the protein sources (chicken/turkey/lean beef), or wholemeal bread with little or no butter.

Another alternative would be a Tupperware box with wholegrain pasta  and a protein that stretches over a couple of meal times, so you make more than normal that will last you. This would be perfect when you are at work and you have little time to eat, so you can eat every 3 hours as you work, put some vegetables such as tomatoes in there to give it some nice flavour.

If you don’t then you will likely binge when you get home and overeat when you hit the fridge, whilst waiting for your main meal.

Plus if you don’t eat regular, your workout energy will be non-existent and your workout performance really low.

Make sure you have a mid-afternoon snack, this keeps you energy supplies high, and again makes sure you don’t develop massive hunger pangs that can destroy your good intentions later on.

Your evening meal will be similar to the lunch choices I discussed earlier, I can never over-emphasise the importance of vegetables in one’s diet to keep your health right at its higher levels.

Try not to eat late if possible, but the mid-morning snacks would be wise choices if you are working late. If you have followed what I have said, you will not need to eat late anyway, because you would have eaten several times in the day by then anyway.

Try and drink 1.5-2 litres each day to keep you fully hydrated, keep your performances at optimum levels and keep burning body fat at your maximum rate.

Keri Mckibbin Personal Training-tel 07968 980808

www.kerimckibbin.co.uk

fitness@kerimckibbin.co.uk

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, August 20th

With the economy still in the doldrums, most people have learnt to adjust to the new demands of life. Most are now spending less, and what they do spend on have become very discerning on what they are prepared to spend on.

They realise now that they have so much packed in their day, they cant devote huge amounts of time to getting in shape, so they want the ultimate workout packaged up in a user-friendly way, and progress showed to them constantly.

Having dealt with very busy people for years now, it was important for me to recognise that most individuals want economy of effort in attaining big results and this was the bottom line for me.

In other words, they don’t want to spend a whole lot of time getting what they want, and super results in a quick period of time are tough to get, but CAN be done and this is the good news and this is my whole philosophy now, and has brought out a whole new performance in me and everyone I train!

Every exercise and movement needs to be well-thought out when you are working against the clock. 20-30 minute workouts can be often superior to the long drawn out efforts that most people have been accustomed to in the past.

Each exercise always has an energy “cost”, usually meaning the tougher the exercise, the higher the energy cost, which means more calories burnt and more body fat lost. This is why lots of my workouts are full of these so called “tougher” exercises.

The first thing is before any of this is learning each movement and doing it with complete safety, I cannot budge from that.

Then the tempo and intensity required has to be taught, and got used to.

Then when we get to the level where workouts are done at a good pace without much of a break, this is when true economy of effort is really valuable and you will get a lot of return for a relatively low time investment. This is a high return workout went taught properly and once you learn it, you are unlikely to go back to the slow, laboured way of working that probably brought you mediocre results at best!

Time to change, save a lot of time and re-think what you’re doing.

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 17th August

Once you make the big change to eating well, and more natural food, the common question is how long it will take to get used to a big change in diet.

Scientific studies show us that it generally takes around 12 weeks to get used to this change, and more importantly for your taste buds to change completely.

This means that foods that you used to be tempted to eat will soon become foods that you find sickly, you especially when eaten to excess.

The great thing about this situation is that you won’t feel like going to the bad old days once you make this change, as long as you follow it through and remain committed in getting used to it.

Making the first step is the hardest part and sometimes the thought about eating healthy for the rest of your life can be overpowering.

Most of us would love to stay in our comfort zone and it would be so much easier to eat in the chip shop every night, drink alcohol as often as we liked, and hit the bakery every morning for some lovely snacks full of sugar.

The downside to all of this behaviour if done over a longer period unfortunately would likely to be weight gain, shortness of breath, joint trouble, heart disease and elevated risk of many serious diseases.

So if you look at the big picture, which scenario is more appealing?

Would it be a lifetime habit of eating foods very low in quality nutrients and super-high in saturated fat and calories, that in general makes you feel sluggish, desperately low in energy, overweight and plain unhealthy?

Or do you put up with a few weeks of all that sugar, salt and saturated fat leaving your body and then your body having a much more sustainable diet for the rest of your life, giving you huge amounts of energy, healthy body fat levels, much more joint strength, more endurance and higher strength levels?

Not much of a choice there but it’s a free country so at the end of the day, it’s YOUR choice!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, August 16th

Fat in your diet has always been the ultimate sin for many people, “avoid at all costs” is often shouted from the rooftops when it comes to losing body fat. Unfortunately, this statement is only partially true.

Saturated fat is the true baddie, with the potential to clog up your arteries and cause all sorts of health problems, and in particular raise your chances of having a heart attack markedly.

Saturated far can raise chances of contracting any serious disease, so it’s a great idea for you to eat red meat for instance, just once a week. Anything in moderation is okay, and common sense must be used with the foods that can cause you problems if consumed too often.

The “good fats” often termed essential fats, and plenty of them do exist, should play a major role in your diet.

If fish isn’t a major part of your diet, then you need to ask yourself why not, as it contains lots of important fats that your body needs to function properly in all areas.

If you don’t include nuts in their natural form in your diet, then you’re missing out again on a great source of essentials fats for your body, not only that but your immune system too.

So we have established fats are important for your diet and wellbeing, but this won’t mean so much UNLESS you get refined sugars out of your diet.

Putting sugar on top of your cereal or adding to your tea/coffee is something you need to eliminate straight away, the effect on your physical appearance will be dramatic given time, and will take that sweet tooth away for good.

If that sweet tooth is always there, then you’re always liable to come totally off your eating programme, because the temptation for excess sugar will always be there.

Taking saturated fat AND refined sugar out of your diet will have an overwhelmingly positive effect on the way you look and feel.

Twitt