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“Women shouldn’t lift weights”……..don’t talk rubbish!!!

This statement is wrong on so many levels its not true, but lets set the record straight once and for all!

In most gyms, you only see women near the CV machines, the bike, stepper and treadmill mainly, and never seeing them pushing any kind of weight.

First of all, if they don’t start lifting weights, they will NEVER reshape their bodies effectively. If you just do aerobic exercise, you may be likely to get smaller but the shape you want will never happen.

Your metabolism won’t be raised as much either, if you do aerobic work your metabolism will be raised for around 12 hours, if you do some weights and aerobic work, your metabolism will be raised for 36 hours, huge difference right there and a great reason to include resistance training in your workouts.

Women in recent studies have been found to be twice as likely to suffer from depression.

It has been found that intense weight training or intense resistance exercise has been found to get rid of many of the symptons associated with depression. The same results were not found by doing aerobic work alone. This can be a massive change and uplift to anyone’s mindset and is very recommended.

All women i have trained hard with weights always look more feminine, and never bulky. You get toned with resistance work and not “bulked out” like so many people say, that only happens if you consume huge amounts of food daily as well as illegal steroids, which leads into a whole new world of negatives.

Don’t forget the bone strengthening benefits of resistance training, in these days of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, there has never been a better time to do your resistance work, any doctor will tell you that. I have seen some serious results first-hand so i know it works in a big way!

You will get an enormous amount out of resistance training, and do wonders for your appearance as well as your mindset. When you get used to lifting weights, you will become more confident and it will feel very good to be thata much stronger and much more toned.

In short weight training and resistance work will benefit you in every single way, so lets get on with your workouts and incorporate resistance at least twice a week!

Twitt
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Summer’s the time to practice!

This is the time to get out there every day and make a huge change to the way you look and feel.

For example, those of you who don’t like an audience when you train, there are far more opportunities now than in the autumn/winter.

I saw a lady who perhaps had 3-4 stone to lose power walking in the woods in the country park, and she seemed to having a great time. Perhaps, she wouldnt have done this if she had to walk on the main roads in the winter? This is a regular event for her now, and she seems to love her weekend walks, if she carries this on until the end of september, she should achieve some incredible results.

If you do a map search of the UK from above, you will see that there is more green areas in this area than nearly anywhere. For example, when you watch the opening credits of Eastenders, you will see the map of the east end of london, and there are VERY FEW areas of green on the map, so we should feel lucky to enjoy the surrounding area.

The wet week (like this week)  is no excuse either, it may actually be an advantage.

When its wet and rainy, there tends to be less people out and about so this gives you even more opportunity to do your workouts without too many people around. When its sunny and hot, there tends to be stacks of people around, therefore making it off-putting for many. Also, when its wet, its usually a lot cooler, allowing for better performances and generally making the whole experience a lot more enjoyable.

Summer is a great time to practice and get good at whatever you want to do. The swimming pool is usually quiter so you have more opportunity to become a better swimmer.

There are more daylight hours in the summer so the excuses you may use in the winter won’t apply here. The summer hours are long but slowly getting shorter as of now, so its time to get out there and get a firm foundation before winter is upon us again!

The habits/foundations you lay this summer will make all the difference when you’re trying to get through the cold wet winters.

Lets get out and do something, not only to feel better but to shape your future!

Twitt
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Quality of food

Debbie makes a very good point that if you get ill, you have to replace your nutrients more or less straight away when you feel well again. There is a difference between this and just chucking anything in your body when you’re feeling better, and it can make the difference between putting on a few pounds and maintaining your ideal weight, between creating new cravings and not creating them, developing new energy or feeling flat and deflated.

Its coming up to the weekend again, and the cravings will instantly start once we wave the white flag to the fattier and more sugary food friday, saturday and sunday.

Have you noticed its very hard to stop once we give in and start eating things we strictly do not eat during the week?

The quality of food you eat in the week always propels you to new heights, or drags you down to new lows.

The biggest myth out there is that if you really bust a gut, train extremely hard and really outdo yourself, then you can literally eat what you want. This is truly when a lot of people fall down because they are not replacing the lost nutrients that debbie talks about. Debbie actually talked about lose nutrients after illness but you still need to replace those lost nutrients after exercise too, or you’re not going to recover quickly simple as that!

The fitter you get and the longer you eat good, healthy nutritious food, the more you like the taste of this good food. Its all a process of getting used to it and discovering food CAN be nice in its natural state. All of those fatty sauces make me wheeze like mad, and me wheezing all day and producing lots of unwanted flem can be seriously bad for my day.

So the quality of food will be highly important for just about everything you want to achieve, so the question is, do you want to achieve a huge amount of not?!!

Twitt
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HOW

A massive improvement is all great and an amazing achievement when it happens, but it’s the “how” that really concerns me before we all do our lap of honour and pat ourselves on the back a bit too hard.

It’s the “how” we decide in the first place we want to get in shape.

It’s the how we go about doing it.

It’s the how we pick ourselves up when things go wrong.

It’s the way we integrate recommended activities into our life.

It’s the how good nutritious food somehow becomes tasty and we don’t need all those fatty sauces any more.

It’s the how tough workouts somehow become even easy in a few weeks time.

It’s the how we learn to sleep better when exercise becomes part of our life.

It’s the how we actually miss breakfast when we don’t have it, even if for 30 years we never ate breakfast in the mistaken belief that it would make us lose weight.

It’s the change in attitude we get, when we become far more positive instead of negative about everything.

All of these things are life-changing, so lets keep digging deep and finding out the “how” we do things!

Twitt
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Hunger pangs

Most people i know go through hunger pangs straight after they have been ill. I am going through it right now after my bad stomach, and it can be tough to handle.

Its as if your body has this need to get the weight back on and will play all kinds of games with you until that happens.

This is sometimes an excuse to eat more calorie dense foods to get your weight back up quickly, as more fatty and sugary foods seem to do the job better than other.

I am trying to go through the harder way right now and eat clean, and let my body adjust back to normal in a more natural way.

How many times have you all over eaten after a stomach upset, or any time you lose weight quickly? It feels the right thing to do but really its a trap set up by your body to consume lots and lots of calories.

The funny thing is, it wont take you long to get used to all those extra calories and your new calorie maintenance levels will only go up. In other words, you will expect more and more food each and every day, this will naturally lead to weight gain which is seriously bad news.

Another reason why we need more calories is because we try and get back to normal activity too quick, and this in itself needs a lot of energy which means extra calories.

The bottom line needs to be to get back to normal eating as soon as possible, not overeat and especially not the wrong foods. Your body will soon get back in a normal pattern and your recent stomach upset/illness will soon be forgotten, and the temptations will soon go away.

Im already having better workouts and feeling very good, and i know the cleaner i eat, the better i will look and feel by the time my day off comes on saturday.

Twitt