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Monday, 19th March 2012

Another monday and you know that should mean a great workout to get you fully into your week, get you movitated and get you fired up for the monday to friday days that are essential for getting a good block of training in.

Whatever way you care to do it, just make sure you do. If you rely on a training partner, then make sure he or she turns up and that they are reliable and never let you down, a common training partner problem!!

If you have a certain ritual that you do before training that makes it a successful one, then please keep it up and keep it going.

You have more light than ever now this time of year, its around 645pm before it gets dark and its very light at 6am when you get up, you do not have any excuse now surely to get yourself going. Take all your excuses out of your life and i find the best way of doing that is exercising early before work, that gets the job done early and you will start the day in a very positive way!!!

Its a monday and hope you have planned things well. If you are working with weights tonight, then plan your other weights sessions for wednesday and friday to give your body a rest. Your cardio work can be done on tuesday, thursday and sunday ideally to make sure you make the most out of every session.

If you plan properly, then you will leave absolutely nothing to chance and you are pretty much guaranteed a good week!

Same with your food, plan to eat fresh and natural foods from monday to friday and have a big of what you fancy at the weekend. This will easily mean you eat well 80% of the time or even more, guaranteeing yet more results and big benefits.

Dont over-complicate it and make good things happen in your life, simplicity will always work for you!!!

Twitt
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Friday, 16th March 2012

Like analysing your food, analysing the way you exercise is just as important and results giving.

One of the most startling realisations I had was when I discovered that if you were on the same moderate programme for years and years, and you do the same thing day in day out, at the same speed using the same resistance, for the same number of times, then your fitness levels hadn’t really gone anywhere for years.

This statement can be upsetting for a lot of people because the truth can hurt, and an enormous amount of individuals and groups even will do things this way. Change is deeply uncomfortable for most people I have found.

The positives you should take out would be that simply changing things around will almost improve you overnight!! There IS a new world out there waiting for you.

If you simply change your programme regularly, then your body will have to keep adapting to change, and this will usually keep bringing you progress too, which is a benefit many have forgotten about unfortunately!

For example, if you have never done any balance or instability work on an unsteady surface, then you are missing out in a big way.

If you have become totally dependent on machines for your workouts, then I guarantee you that you are missing out on the huge benefits of free weights, and that you are really NOT getting the best out of yourself. Your body needs natural movements as much as possible, for all sorts of reasons and many machines do not come close to providing this!

Training is moving away from machines and has been for some time, there are far more inventive and beneficial ways to train, and you need to explore them and ultimately test your body under brand new conditions.

Freshening everything up is usually a massive positive in every other area of life, time to do the same with your exercise!

Put your trust in RESULTS, instead of machines that are already dinosaurs!

Twitt
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Thursday, 15th March

If we are talking so much about analysing the food and drink what you put into your mouth, we must realise by now how important the “little things” really are.

If you can chip away at every meal by simply making small changes, to achieve a MASSIVE result, then this has got to be a change worth making surely?!! Its not really about the massive overhaul that most people imagine either.

If we talk about having a plainer breakfast such as weetabix which means no additives, then that does not mean a “version” of weetabix such as the ones which honey coat or sugar coat the wheat. This I can assure you will turn this normally good cereal into a cereal that contains heavily refined sugar, or the porridge oats with apple pie filling-IT DOES NOT WORK OUT WELL FOR YOU FULL STOP!!

This may taste nicer but its only going to do you harm in terms of weight gain and elevated blood sugar levels. Also, it will keep your “sweet tooth” well and truly alive, making you rely on refined sugars the rest of the day.

Its like taking sweetener with everything, what you are doing is keeping your taste for sweet tooth strong making you prejudiced on the kinds of foods you are “willing” to eat!

If you are only willing to eat heavily sugared foods, then you have little or no hope in achieving your true aims and goals. This kind of eating and behaviour will undoubtedly lead to potential diabetes issues in the near future unless you modify your eating without delay.

When you look at the carbohydrate section on the nutritional analysis on practically every food you eat, if the “of which sugars” is almost or all of the total carbohydrate, then its never going to be any good for you, unless its things like fruit juice which I advised to dilute anyway.

The “of which sugars” part should be comparatively low meaning theres a slow blood sugar release, and doesn’t play havoc with your blood sugar levels. You want stability all day long in this area, meaning you have longer term energy and little or no risk of developing diabetes over time.

Make it your goal to truly analyse what you eat, you may think you are eating healthy but in fact, you could be consuming a lot of unhealthy sugar which will disguise all your good work in the exercise department!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 13th March

Writing down everything you eat can be very powerful for you in terms of fine tuning the diet you really want, and really NEED to be on.

I do this exercise with all my clients from time to time, no matter how good they look!

This is because none of us are ever perfect, and most of us slip from time to time, sometimes without even noticing.

Take the article in the news today recommending that we do not eat more than one piece of red meat a week, due to the increase in incidence cancer and heart disease in the last ten years, and the research done in thousands of people.

One or two small steaks was more than enough for the entire week they said, and bacon was the worst offender in terms of meat being bad for you.

So if we rewind this article and go back to writing everything down, kind of a diary of what you eat over seven days, and in your head you think you only eat red meat just once or twice a week, is that really true?

How often do you eat beef, bacon, gammon even? What about steak and maybe pork? How often, go on count them and you may be shocked?!

The same applies to every food group. How many times do you eat white pasta, white potatoes and white bread?

How about alcohol? Is it really our recommended once a week?

How about your portion sizes? Do you eat too much constantly at most meals? Do you skip meals?

Studies have shown that individuals who write down exactly what they really eat over a seven day period tend to be very successful in their overall fat loss, and overall conditioning.

Nothing like being accountable, and it all starts right here if you really want to be successful!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 8th March

Following on with the family food advice, you need to keep considering why you are doing this whole thing, and this will keep you strong in your times of doubt and uncertainty.

  • Eating often is fun and good for you!

–     This day’s eating is all about eating every 3 hours or so, raising the rate our bodies burn calories so we burn more fat, feeling full throughout the day so we don’t feel the need to binge at certain time, and actually feel about hundred times better than we have before.

Positive trade off’s

–     You CAN keep this way of eating up if you really try and all it takes sometimes is  5 minutes preparation the night before making a packed lunch.

–     Plus, all that money you will have spent on junk food can go on something worthwhile, like a new dvd or some new clothes!

  • Summing up

–     changing your lifestyle to a rewarding healthy one starts with what you put into your body. Make it a priority when you go to a supermarket to influence your parents on what you want to eat. As a parent, you can inspire your kids to eat well too. They will listen if you tell then you want good food (and vice-versa) and soon it will become second nature.

–     Make sure you try and work up to 5 servings of fruit and veg a day

–     Try and get 2 servings of protein such as fish, chicken, eggs, lean beef, nuts, lentils etc per day.

–     Choose 2 portions of milk, yoghurt, cheese etc for calcium and extra protein

–     Use whole meal/wholegrain versions of pasta, bread, rice, cereals, potatoes to give you lots of energy every day.

–     Try to limit these in your diet using them more as a treat-Crisps, cakes, biscuits, pastries, chips, mayo,  salad cream, margarine, cooking oil, pop/fizzy drinks

You have had a pretty good overview on how you should be making your healthy lifestyle count, and its benefits.

If you adopt all or most of these guidelines, then you and your family’s quality of life in terms of health will be enhanced out of all recognition.

Once you do it this way, you won’t fall for the next “big” diet, those slimming classes that never ever worked long term (scientific studies back all of this up), or any of the faddy ways to lose weight.

Trust in your own instincts of what is right, is sensible and likely to work for you over a lifetime!

Twitt