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Wednesday, 30th November

The end of the month and a time for celebration or throwing your chips in and calling it quits for christmas?!!!!!

Depends on your current level of fitness and conditioning i suppose!

If you are in good shape, you will raring to go in december and really make further inroads into your body fat and strength levels, i certainly see a lot of people in this situation.

If you are struggling to get workouts in and shop well for good food, then chances are you will be glad to see christmas coming, so that you make a “new year resolution” and lose all the weight after christmas!!!

This is following typical behaviour by most of the population.

I always tell people that december is one of the most important months to train hard and eat relatively well. Of course, you will be having lunches out, evenings out when healthy food may not be on top of the list, and you will be drinking alcohol a lot more too.

Despite all of this, the exercise and effort you put into it will be worth heck of a lot to you.

If you want a wheezy chest, then don’t exercise.

If you want to lower your immune system, then don’t exercise.

If you want your clothes to feel much tighter, then don’t exercise!

If you want to stagger into christmas and face a herculean challenge in the new year again, then don’t exercise!!!

So in december, everyone knows you may well drink more than you should, you will almost certainly eat much more than you should, and your sleep may well be lousy, but despite all of this, commit yourself to exercising throughout the month. This is the greatest christmas gift you can give to yourself, you are nothing if you haven’t got good health so lets keep this uppermost in your mind please!!

Twitt
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Tuesday, November 29th

The tragic loss of Gary Speed has had everyone scratching their head and numb with shock.

Whatever happened, nothing will really make up for his family’s loss and football’s loss in general.

People have started to speculate on the reasons for it all but the simple fact is that nobody knows for sure.

Depression has been one train of thought, the other he was being blackmailed by the newspapers to all sorts of wild rumours and accusations.

Depression is a very common problem in society and is often known as the silent killer. There was a german goalkeeper dead a couple of years ago after experiencing clinical depression, yet nobody knew. They call it “the curse of the strong” because you have to be mentally strong to hide it from everyone when you think about it!!!

Depression can start as something small and build up to something that literally takes over your life.

What can you do? The first thing i think is to consult your doctor to put you in touch with a professional in the field, you are not going mad, you shouldnt be ashamed, its just a fact of life with many, many people and needs help as soon as possible.

Exercise can be a great help for the individuals i have dealt with who have experienced these issues.

Exercise will automatically raise your spirits by releasing endorphins (a feel good hormone) in your body. If done every or most days, exercise will have a hugely positive effect in battles with every disease and ailments. Depression is a hugely complex problem that is multi-layered, and im not pretending to be an expert.

But, i do know that eating well and healthy, avoiding alcohol (a depressant) and working out in fresh air have long been proven to have very powerful effect against depression.

Its always better to do something about it than ignore any problem, whatever your situation, these three things will work for you no matter where you are right now!!!

Twitt
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Monday, 28th November

With more and more individuals getting diabetes, and other related diseases, isn’t it time we all paid more attention to the sugary foods that we consume every day, both knowingly and not.

By this i mean that there are many foods out there who seem healthy, but are in fact, mostly full of sugar.

Cereals are usually the biggest offenders.

When you were growing up, i was taught to think that muesli’s such as Alpen were the healthiest around. After all it contained nuts, oatmeal, dried fruit etc, surely it HAD to be good for us?

Back then the amount of sugar that was thrown on top of all these ingredients didnt seem to matter. It seemed okay to pile on different types of sugar in order to sweeten the product. These days you can have the no added sugar varieties and you can really taste the difference in these. These muesli’s STILL seem to taste more sugary than the likes of plain old fashioned porridge and weetabix, because they are exactly that-PLAIN all goodness foods that only contain what they say they contain, and nothing added.

The same can be said about shredded wheat, the more plain the breakfast, the better its going to be for you full stop!

The big problem becomes when you become USED to these higher sugar breakfasts, and more importantly your taste buds become used to sugary foods, meaning the thought and especially taste of plain foods becomes alm0st intolerable.

If your taste buds become used to sugary food and you cant do without them, then you are likely putting yourself in danger and if done for an extended period of time, will most likely up your chances of bringing on diabetes. Then you will be told by your doctor that you MUST get used to more plain, more natural foods to get good health back, and simply manage diabetes  and all its dangers.

The time is now to eat well and protect your body from all the dangers of foods loaded with refined sugars.

Twitt
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Thursday, 25th November

Are you keeping variety in your programme? You still need to keep to your core programme, but you need some extra activities to add to the spice of your life. If you just go to the gym, do you run outside too?

 Have you been cycling outside? Have you ever tried canoeing (its much harder than you think!)? Have you ever tried a trampoline? A lot of people i know find it fun! Have you ever wanted to learn how to swim? Whats wrong with signing up for a course for 10 weeks?

We talked about exercise being an every day habit for you, have you got to that stage yet or are you still fighting that concept? Good news is that if you stop fighting it, it WILL become an every day event that you actually enjoy as long as you have enough variation!

Have you had the goal of becoming a good runner? If this is true, start out walking every day and see how you feel after a couple of weeks.

Then you may be able to run ten yards in different intervals when you get your breath back. The worst thing you can do is start off running.

 I know people who bought the “run a marathon in 26 weeks” book and ended up with nasty blisters, bad feet, knees and back because they didnt listen to good advice. They followed the advice of running 5 times a week and it ended up in disaster! These books often don’t take into account everyday people and the problems they may run into.

You MUST try to find something you like, otherwise you are very unlikely to keep it up.

Another great tactic would be to team up with a friend in your fitness, as long as you have similar goals and are of similar fitness levels. The social aspect alone will motivate you along very well and take you to levels of training you may not have thought possible.

Bottom line is simply to DO instead of talking about it so lets give it your best shot!

Twitt
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Thursday, 23rd November

Hopefully, you have reinvigorated yourself this week by re-booting your exercise programme and you have already hit a big couple of workouts already this week.

Its this type of enthusiasm that i have been bumping in to all week long. Any “feeling sorry for yourself” attitude has been crushed and replaced with fresh enthusiasm full of people rallying themselves for a big end of year performance.

All this sea change in attitude takes is a momentum shift in the way you approach everything. If you approach everything in a negative way, you are highly likely to get a negative reponse.

If you approach everything in a highly optimistic and positive way, then doors usually open for you and people can be very receptive to your ideas.

For example, if i suggest a workout to someone that involves one of their most difficult bike rides so far this year, with a few extremely difficult hills etc, then the initial response may not be so good! However, if i point out that this type of ride coincided with them being in their best physical performance all year, then they start to associate the two and then start nodding in a positive way and are then far more likely to approach and have heck of a go at this hugely difficult ride.

Then when the ride is completed, a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction starts to come over them and this one workout alone, can make the difference from either having a mediocre end to the year, or a far more exciting end to the year with perhaps new highs of performance attained, which usually transform to excellent body fat levels and that all important feeling of wellbeing!!!

Whatever your situation right now, positivity about your true ability and previous achievements this year need to be revisited right now to end the year on a massive high, and allow you to follow on into 2012 with a fresh batch of goals that will inspire you on to greater things again!!

Twitt