Posted on

Wednesday, May 11th 2011

I have a lot of questions about blood pressure, and by now, i have helped at least 100 individuals get off blood pressure medication that they seemed to spend a lifetime on. I am not a magician, intead i apply tried and tested ways to change a situation for people that can sometimes seem desperate!

A lot of people ask too what does blood pressure mean? And what ranges should they be in to be considered healthy?

A brief description would be that when doctors take your blood pressure, they are checking how hard the blood pushed against the arteries and veins as it moves around your body.

It is measured in mm of mercury and is always written as two numbers.

The top number, the systolic reading, measures the pressure of the blood when your heart pumps it out and the bottom number, the diastolic number, measures the pressure when your heart relaxes and refills.

Accoring to a million medical journals and accepted to be fact by 100% of the medical community, high blood pressure is diagnosed when readings are persistently above 140/90.

This means you are significantly increasing the risk of having a stroke or heart attack, and can lead to kidney disease, so its always a great idea to have your blood pressure checked at least once a year. You can also buy home machines cheaply in supermarkets these days.

One of the key reasons your blood pressure will be over the top is salt, this is the single most destructive reason why people get high blood pressure and this is why diet is so important. Salt really is the hidden evil in foods. People always go on about fats and sugars, but salt is equally as bad if not more so, and is more or less in every food, especially pre packaged food such as ready meals and all processed food, this literally is a disaster waiting to happen so try and get it out out of your life as soon as possible, and im VERY SERIOUS!!!!!

Other contributory factors are alcohol and a lack of exercise but we will touch on these important points again!!

Diet is so important, fail to pay attention and you’re on a one way track to ill health, change it now if you want to be at your best health levels!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, May 9th 2011

When you miss a workout, you can’t be blamed for that as things happen, life happens and something may have come up last minute.

This doesn’t usually explain a week off training though, and definitely not two weeks!!! I find those who do take time off their training for whatever reason, always struggle to get back into it, and regret the time they took off. I am not talking about annual holidays of course here, when a break can actually be good for you if you have trained hard all year!!!

For example, over the last couple of weeks, we had more or less two three day weeks with the big bank holidays, and those i had to miss training for two weeks have really struggled to get anywhere near where they usually are!!! This is a fact and you may be going through exactly the same feelings yourself!!!

If you think two weeks off is not good, what happens to those of you who take a month off, three months off or even a year off? What happens to your get up and go during this period? My educated guess would be that your get up and go would be very low, and the lack of spring in your step would make you almost a different person, kind of like the opposite of the huge beneficial effects that exercise normally have on everyone.

Coming back from a lay off can be tough on the mind, as well as your body of course. Getting confidence back is half the battle when it comes to committing to getting yourself back in shape again!!!

Confidence comes from doing the right things every week, that means training a minimum of 3 times a weeks, eating well 80% of the time, getting some good sleep most nights, drinking enough water and generally being positive about your prospects about getting into shape over a reasonable amount of time.

Consistency is my favourite word, and the true secret to success!!!

Twitt
Posted on

May 7th

Your saturday treat may be happening right now, and you very much deserve it if you have been tight all week on your food. I don’t mean really small portions and missing meals either, i mean sensible sized portions of good quality food.

If you have made a good effort all week, then having a treat today will not matter at all will it?

If having a treat is just like another day, then making another excuse to have a treat today is just like another day for you, and you’re not really treating yourself, and getting or being in shape is not a very serious proposition for you.

Saturday is the day to let go a bit if you live a healthy lifestyle, because it switches off your mind a bit from the rigours of working out and being in shape, living a healthy lifestyle can be easy if you practice it a lot, but it can also wear you down if you don’t give yourself a break.

Whatever you are doing today, its a time to relax, eat of a bit of what you fancy, have a drink if you want and reflect on what has probably been a tough week.

Tomorrow is sunday and a workout early on would be the perfect remedy to your day of relaxing in all sorts of ways today!!!

Twitt
Posted on

May 5th 2011

So from yesterday, you should have identified the damaging habits that are putting weight on you, making your tired all the time, giving you bad skin, making you have poor sleep, and in general, not helping you at all get in the shape you know you really want to be.

It may be quite a statement to say that sugary and fatty food can cause all of those things to happen but it happens to be a fact.

Once you substitute all the rubbish in your life, or most of it for fresher more natural food, then your life becomes of a much higher quality across the board.

So if you have changed a least one potentially damaging habit for a good habit that will benefit you, give it a couple of weeks and then you will have momentum to change another one, in fact you will WANT to change another bad habit because you will be so encouraged by the success of the last change.

So if this week’s habit was to change the cake/biscuit with the coffee or tea, then how about making an even greater change. You’re not going to get a bigger change than swapping terrible breakfast choices with far more beneficial choices.

For example, if breakfast at the moment is something like a piece of white toast full of butter or margarine, then you can easily change that to wholemeal toast, VERY LITTLE butter on it (butter is a far more natural product than margarine), and maybe a bananas mashed on it, this is an easy choice you make right now and will instantly benefit you.

What about if you are having one of the typical cereals, usually sugar laden and full of additives and chemicals that are going to be destructive for your body?

Its time to change to a natural product such as porridge, which will be full of 100% rolled oats and nothing else! Chop some dried fruit up for flavourings, and a natural flavour at that, no need to add sugar at all!

 This will give you up to 4 hours of steady energy that won’t crash your blood sugar levels at any time, you couldn’t wish for a more solid start to the day!!!

These are simple tried and tested choices that are going to benefit you in the short and long term. Don’t overcomplicate things, its all about making easy but life-changing choices so lets give it a go today!!!!

Twitt
Posted on

May 4th

Bad habits have become so normal in our lives, they are exactly that-normal everyday life and tough to break.

To break them, we have to realise why they have become “normal” in the first place!

If a behaviour makes us feel good, then its natural that we are going to want to do it an awful lot, even if its not for our own good in the short term or long term. We all know of such habits, and its a question of how many times we do them.

Pleasure from everyday habits means your brain wants more and more, and if that habit is destructive, such as over eating, over drinking or smoking, then its not going to be a pretty path! The more you repeat these habits, the more they become ingrained and deep rooted in your brain, therefore significantly harder to break!

There is a very close link to these types of habit forming and full blown addiction, an addiction is of course the extreme version but addiction in over eating and over drinking alcohol are not uncommon at all.

To get rid of these habits, you have to replace the old destructive habit with a good one, and then keep on replacing it until it becomes permanent, this can take 2-3 months research says but it does work. If you usually have a coffee and always have a cake with it, then trying one day to just have the coffee without the cake will be hard, a week without a cake will be very hard, but i will bet you that the longer it goes on, the likelyhood is that you will never go back to that every day poor choice, and get rid of your sugar addiction in one go!!

Keep sugar in your life and you will never lose your sweet tooth, the sooner you get used to real food the better, that means food more in its natural state. Bad habits are there to be broken so lets have a good go today!!!!

Twitt