Posted on

March 17th 2011

One of the best things you learn from staying fit and healthy is learning to cook from scratch.

Jean for example yesterday said how she is using more natural ingredients in her meals than ever, and reaping the benefits in terms of a lower heart rate, weight and fat loss, increased endurance and greater fitness and energy levels in general. Most people if not all would be thrilled with such impressive results.

You are using a simple formula when cooking from scratch.

When you read the ingredients label of a jar of sauce for example of tomato sauce that goes with spaghetti Bolognese, you will struggle to pronounce some of the chemical ingredients that have gone into the product, let alone understand them!

When you think about it, if someone asked you to eat or drink something you didn’t know how it would affect you, most of you would never eat it!!!

That same sauce we KNOW contains more sugar than you need for your body, it contains more SALT than you need for your body, it contains more saturated fat than you need in your body. So if you pose the question again put like that to most people, most of you would choose not to eat it.

The worrying thing about all of this is that the tomato sauce for Bolognese in a jar is FAR better for you than most ready meals you find in the freezer of most supermarkets!!! This is a worrying statement and if you go further into cheap takeaway establishments, then the truth about what you are consuming REALLY GETS UGLY!!!

I know a lot of you will feel rotten after a takeaway the night before due to the excess salt, sugar, saturated fat and MSG (monosodium glutamate often used with Chinese takeaways). Ironically, if you see Chinese food cooked properly by Chinese people, they never use MSG because they know how bad it is for you.

So you have a stark choice, keep loading up the chemicals in your body and feel and look rotten in so many different ways, OR start cooking your food from scratch and immediately start benefiting from health benefits right across the board, which will be very meaningful to your quality of life!!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 16th 2011

The ability to get out there on such a beautiful day and exercise should never be taken for granted.

Most people will tell you that if you have spent any time at all in hospital, then being out in the fresh air and actually being able to exercise is a very powerful statement indeed.

Most people will also tell you that if you have spent any time in a cemetery, it will definitely make you realise how important your opportunity to exercise and live life in the fresh air actually is.

Most people if not all, would swap with you every time if they had the chance, and that’s a fact!!!

To brighten the conversation up a bit, isn’t it time you got much more active than you may be currently, perhaps you are but if you’re not, then you really need to start putting things into perspective and creating as short and long term plan for your health.

The short term plan could involve making a massive difference to yourself in the next 12 weeks or so, it is entirely possible to make such a short term difference to yourself if you’re willing to change your everyday habits for a better existence.

If you have a fried breakfast, snack on chocolate and crisps, fry everything and eat a lot of processed food, and then wash it all down a few times a week with some wine and/or a few beers, then its highly likely you’re going to be on a one way road to ill health and problems down the road sooner rather than later, its all a matter of time.

If you changed that to some porridge for breakfast, snacking on fruit and natural nuts, drink plenty of water throughout the day, and keep making lean proteins such as chicken, turkey, fish etc the foundation of your week , then avoid alcohol 6 days a week only drinking in moderation a maximum of once a week, then you’re going to transforming your life in a bigger and better way than you ever though possible. High energy levels, a lean harder body and very positive levels of general health will become the norm in your life.

Time to do it and what are you waiting for!

Twitt
Posted on

March 15th 2011

The little decisions we have to make every day with food and exercise are put into context by our one big decision.

That one big decision is the one when you first started to workout and eat much better.

It could have been down to you being fed up with the way you looked and felt, it could have been because you were always teased about your weight, if you are a man, you may have been teased about being so skinny and weak, you may have always wanted to take part in a sporting event such as a 10k run or maybe a marathon.

Whatever it may have been, its time to remember that feeling all over again when it comes to your workouts and the way you shop for food.

If you’re buying chicken for example for you weekly eating at home, it really is not acceptable to have processed chicken with lots of additives all over it.

There was one such example this week when I saw that gentleman Levi Roots of reggae reggae sauce fame promoting frozen chicken. He was promoting the most pitiful small piece of chicken you have ever seen, and it was filled with additives and sauces you would never recognise the ingredients of!!! This was £2.20-2.50, and could maybe last one serving and that’s it.

Not only was it not any good for you, it wouldn’t even fill you up properly!!!

Compare that with buying a whole chicken to cook for around £3-4 or even a ready cooked one for up to £5 and you have many different meal options, as well as being very healthy as long as you strip off the skin of course.

These are the decisions that need to be made time after time to make sure you’re going to be in great shape. If you put in rubbish, then , you’re not going to look or feel good full stop. Its time to have a good hard think next time you’re buying all these examples of food, I call them examples because they are not proper food and they are not going to serve you well!!!

Eat natural, eat fresh where possible and keep filling your body with high nutrient, high energy food that is going to take you where you want to go!!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 14th

Another nice week of weather to get you into it, and make your summer promises you made to yourself happen.

Fat burning workouts need to keep happening, and forget staying on stepper’s in the gym for 2 hours to enable you to make that happen. It may say “fat burning” on the machine but it really doesn’t mean thats going to happen at all.

The myth that you need to do cardio to burn fat and use weights to build needs to exploded and kicked into touch for good. That way of thinking in unacceptable and will lead to mediocre results, even after a lot of time spent in the gym. Using resistance/weights in your programme is essential, vital, hugely important, whatever important term you want to use, you can use it so i can’t over estimate it!!!!

Everyone who wants to get into a programme always thinks bike, treadmill and stepper, and sometimes rower, and then settle on whatever they feel most comfortable on, and that usually means what they put the least amount of work into. Its common to walk into some gyms and see the same old people hogging the same old machines, nothing different ever gets tried!!! A sweat may be achieved but doing something different may be a swear word for some!!!

You know by now im a big advocate of working in a circuit style, and i don’t mean drop the weight so low that the workout becomes some kind of pathetic pandsy type of workout that you never get out of breath, this type of cop out is really no acceptable.

You need to work with weights that cause you discomfort especially when it comes to the  7th or 8th rep, so you are actually working hard, and not going through the motions, which is the worst way to train and guarantee mediocrity of the highest order!!!!

You need a good circuit in your life, think 6-8 exercises done for 3 sets and 8 reps per exercise, follow this and you’re going to be getting the results you really dreamed of!!

example-press ups or bench presses

arm dips using bench or chair

alternate squat thrusts

lateral raises

lat pulldowns

curls with dumbbells

plank-aim for one minute eventually

See how you get on and WORK HARD!!!

Keri

Twitt
Posted on

March 11th Supermarket shop

Hope you are having a stronger end to the week and if you are in the majority, you will be doing your weekly shop in the supermarket either today, yesterday or tomorrow.

Are you improving in this area or not? Do u visit only the healthy aisles of the supermarket or are you doing down every aisle such as the chocolate and crisps part, the ready meals part, the alcohol part, and savoury part etc?

The important parts of the supermarket remain the fruit and vegetables to start, depending on how it is laid out.

Here you can get your apples, oranges, blueberries, pears, bananas, broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, jacket potatoes, new potatoes, tomatoes, etc etc. These are the foods that need to be in your diet every single day to look after your body inside and out, fight disease and give you plenty of energy.

Next you probably come to the lean meats such as chicken, turkey, lean beef, lean steaks, lean mince etc, its important to make the right choices here. You can have some red meat, but don’t plan on eating it more than once a week, the health dangers have been well documented in the press lately again so a bit mof moderation is called for here. The lean meats though can form an excellent foundation for your diet.

You may next see some fish, im talking tuna, mackerel, haddock, trout, salmon is always a favourite of mine and you can get all of these either fresh or in a tin, nothing wrong with either in my book and depends on how much you have to spend.

How about some carbs? We mentioned potatoes earlier, but next we have brown rice, wild rice, wholegrain and wholewheat pasta, there are all types of spaghetti and variations (keep it to wholegrain if possible). While we are talking about wholegrain and wholewheat, you can and should apply this to everything and you know i mentioned wholewheat pancakes earlier in the week.

Bread is a big subject for many of you so lets keep it wholemeal if possible, the slower release of energy the better and you want to avoid white bread like the plague, full of bleach, sugar and other cooking agents that you really don’t want to be putting in your body.

Then there’s nuts such as brazils, almonds, cashews, walnuts, hazlenuts etc which are excellent along with dried fruit such as dates, apricots, raisins, figs, prunes which can work as excellent snacks or food sweeteners in a natural way!!

Hows that for a start and making your week go along without too many hiccups, more like plenty of energy and making sure you stay lean and energetic!!!

Twitt