Posted on

Friday, 2nd March

Keeping cholesterol under control will enhance your health, and boost your training efforts no end!

There seems to be a lot of confusion on how cholesterol helps your health, and its role in the body.

Cholesterol is harmful at elevated levels, but does actually provide a lot of good for your body.

Your body manufacters cholesterol in the liver, and from the foods we eat, is used as a component for all our body’s cells, helping to build them.

As long as you eat healthy foods in moderation, and not go too far off your diet, you are likely not to have much of a problem. Some people however do produce more “bad” cholesterol than others naturally, and these people have to be particularly careful, and even end up on medication.

Cholesterol is even needed for proper brain function, and carries antioxidant vitamins to your body’s tissues.

Eating plenty of soluble fibre will help a lot, oatmeal, apples,  peas and barley are proven cholesterol reducing foods.

Chicken and white meats in general are fine, as well as fish in your diet on a regular basis will help.

Whole milk, butter and cheese are foods you should be avoiding, and can make the situation a whole lot worse, if consumed in big quantities on a regular basis.

Prepared foods that contain trans fats or hudrogenated fats are particularly harmful to you, and by now you will have realised how much i despise these foods and their horrible effects over time.

If you are carrying a lot of weight and especially too much weight, then losing weight should be a priority of yours. Studies have shown thhat even a 10 pound weight loss can make a big difference to your cholesterol levels.

Living a healthy lifestyle has never been so important for a multitude of reasons!! Having healthy cholesterol levels are just one vital reason!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 1st March

We all worry about weight, and we are all mostly concerned with the “visual” aspects of health, but we all need to work on our “internal” health a lot more often.

Many of you do not realise for instance, that even if you are at your “target weight”, you are prone to not being exactly healthy inside.

Being skinny is not a guarantee of being healthy at all, and we all know people who smoke 40 a day, drink alcohol, and do not exercise and are still skinny, but would you really say they are healthy?

Let’s use this example.

If you are healthy even, and consume a big fry up with all the added on stuff, black pudding, bacon, fried eggs, fried bread-everything!!!

Then if you tested your blood after 4 hours, the test tube would show a white substance at the top of the water, and that would show the saturated fat you have built up in your blood.

If you compare this to the 4 hours after eating a bowl of porridge, a chicken salad etc, then you WOULD NOT HAVE that horrible white stuff on top of the water in the test tube.

This is scientific fact and you are welcome to ask your doctor about this very experiment.

It really DOES matter what you eat and you ARE what you eat.

Please do not use the excuse that you are “exercising plenty” so you can eat what you want. This is the biggest lie you will ever say, because you are kidding yourself.

If you want to be healthy inside AND out, then you had better take care and choose wisely what you eat.

This all starts in the supermarket, and if you buy rubbish in, then at some stage then you’re going to eat it, so lets stop that excuse right now and take some responsibility for your eating!

Eat well, choose natural and fresh when possible, and really think of how your body is working inside, it’s the key to it all!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 29th February

The face of training has been changing for the last few years in my view, and shows still no chance of slowing down either!

People have never wanted to be stuck on machines for hours, i certainly never wanted to, and most people i know never wanted to either.

The dinosaurs of the gym world have folded in the united states over the last few years, and that list is continuing to intensify in the UK, with Fitness First the latest gym chain seeking  to avoid bankruptcy and owe their creditord 18 million pounds in interest payments alone PER YEAR!!!

There has to be more to training than being like cattle queueing up for mindless machines that don’t really stretch the imagination, or get your body moving in the natural ranges of motion they were NOT designed to in the first place.

Why work on a machine when you can get fantastic results from medicine balls, free weights, bodyweight exercises and other movements that will burn a terrific amount of body fat every single time you do them!

Hopefully, you are hitting a high tempo in your workouts too?!!!

Without doubt, getting used to the tempo of not taking much rest in between exercises is the single most important thing you can get used to. Please do not become one of  these who spends more time talking than actually exercising, because YOU WILL NOT GET THE RESULTS YOU WANT.

The reason why the chains are struggling is because they forgot about results when it came to formulating their business plan. Frankly, if often makes me sick when someone could be going to one of these gyms for literally years, and you could never tell whether they have been exercising or not!

I’m all about results and im passionate about people giving every effort in order to get them. I am about hard work and instilling the confidence for individuals to really go out there and achieve big things with their health and fitness.

Make your choice but promise yourself that you will go flat out to reach your potential!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 28th February 2012

Potential injuries are always a constant threat to our training goals, and its vital we deal with them in an efficient way.

Shin Splints are one of my least favourite injuries, having suffered with them badly when I was 18.

Shin splints are an injury that affects the front part of your leg and in particular your shin. Also, the surrounding tissue can be often painful to touch.

Common symptoms also include pain in this area in the first few minutes of exercise, then it can go away and return just as you finish your run or walk, followed by pain the next couple of days.

I have one lady who is doing the Moonwalk in London in May, and is struggling with the very same complaint.

I have advised two weeks rest from walking to give that area a chance to heal and calm down.

Shin Splints can be caused by running or aggressive walking on hard surfaces, they can be made far worse by using poor quality trainers (you should chance your trainers every 500 miles or 6 months in general).

Icing this area a couple of times a day for 15 minutes at a time can bring a lot of relief, and help greatly with inflammation. The pain can be quite severe and if left unchecked, can lead believe it or not to stress fractures in the shin area!

Simply “running through it” will not cut much ice with this injury, in fact it can make it ten times worse.

When you do feel like getting back walking and running after a rest, I would advise only very soft surfaces such as grass to do your workouts on. Hard concrete type surfaces will only bring back this injury.

Non weight bearing exercises will only be good, such as swimming and cycling, and inside weight training/resistance training of all kinds. This means you can keep very fit and strong whilst you are recovering.

These are all handy tips to make sure you make the most out of a potentially nasty situation, and certainly don’t make it worse!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, February 26th

To maximise your gains in fitness, i cannot stress enough how vital your eating is, and what eating CLEAN really means.
To me, eating clean means eating food as much as possible in its natural state, and keeping refined sugars to an absolute minimum.
 
All the foods we always talk about will always bear fruit for you if you pardon the pun!
 
Porridge is a natural food that gives you long term energy, and stops you snacking.
 
Any oat based products or porridge with added “apple pie” type flavourings, WILL NOT DO YOU ANY GOOD.
 
Wholemeal bread in moderation is a sign of good clean eating, White bread is the equivalent of a disaster zone, full of refined sugar, bleaching agents and lots of chemicals and rubbish designed to put weight on you, it will be really unhealthy on all sorts of level for your body, and you have to avoid this rubbish if you are to be successful in weight/fat loss.
 
The margarine and butter on top should be avoided, this is saturated fat and can never be any good. Saying that, butter is the natural product and helps your body more than margarine, which can be horrid for your body and contains needless calories.
 
White meats are very welcome, fish is fantastic (no batter or any fatty sauce on it), cottage cheese is great, lean cuts of red meat are fine once a week.
 
White pasta is not acceptable when you can eat “clean” and have wholegrain and wholewheat pasta.
 
New potatoes and sweet potatoes are great examples of potatoes with a nice low sugar release, and offer a lot of nutrition.
 
White potatoes wont work as well, more refined sugar.
 
Fruit is fine in moderation, although classed as refined sugar, is a food in its natural state and offers far more than any negatives.
 
Fruit juice should be dilluted, and this will will give you far less refined sugar per glass.
 
All vegetables are classed as eating clean, and offer an abundance of nutrients and is nature’s way of making you healthy and helping your body to function properly.
 
Eating clean means trying to be as natural as possible in your food choices, this will automatically cut down on your refined sugars, and give you dramatic changes in bringing your body fat down!!
Twitt