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Friday night is blow your diet night……………

Or not?

What time exactly do your good intentions go down the pan?

Is it straight after work, lunch time in the pub today, are you going to have a massive takeaway tonight?, are you going to a restaurant tonight and have pudding for the first time this week (dont you hate it when the waitress says “have you any roon for dessert in a sickening voice”?) Can’t they come up with an original line? or are you simply going to go down the pub tonight and have your fill of beer and wine? Or is it the petrol station on the way home with the bottle of wine and all the chocolate and ice cream you can handle?

Whatever it is you decide, you have to think about exactly when your good intentions disappear and how much weight you will put on the weekend. Then some may blame their workouts not working when they weigh in next, not the weekend’s avalanche of calories!!! You simply cant get away with a whole weekend of excess eating and expect to be somehow in shape on the monday morning.

I always recommend having a bit of what you fancy definitely, it keeps us sane and it stops us from totally giving up our favourite treats. The danger becomes when you start off on the friday with a cheat of your choice and then it becomes EVERY meal until sunday night! Somehow justifying it by saying you have worked hard in the week!! This is the easiest way to spoil all that hard work in the week and put on the weight you worked so hard to get rid of all week long.

This is why its always better to pick your cheat day, when you have treats that you don’t normally have.

When the subject of cheat day came up, a LOT of people took it as you could get up as early as possible and then force feed yourself ice cream, chips, chocolate ALL day long and night, and then you were totally justified in doing this. Nothing was off limits and it was compulsory to have lots of spare chocolate in the glove department when you were driving. Eating until you are sick is never acceptable AND THIS IS NOT cheat day i can assure you as it was meant to be in terms of helping your diet!!!!

Cheat day is a day of having a bit of what you fancy in MODERATION and not an eating competition like many believe!!

This also assumes you EAT VERY CLEAN in the week. If this is not the case and you have treats most days, then cheat days are really not recommended for fat loss.

Enjoy your friday and all weekend, and try to work out whether you’re training for an eating competition, or you’re really just having a well-deserved break from eating very healthy all the time!

Twitt
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Breakfast really IS for champions!

You have heard off me and about another million people, breakfast is absolutely, definitely, seriously, no doubt, the VERY most important meal of the day!!!!!!!!

Familiar excuses you may be

 “i don’t have time”

“i’m not hungry in the morning”

“i don’t like breakfast foods”

“i’m on a diet”

“if i eat breakfast, i feel hungrier all day”

These are just some of the excuses i hear and just about everyone hears and makes from time to time.

If you start missing breakfast, you are likely to concentrate less effectively in the morning, all morning in fact, you are likely not to be so good at work and if you are in school or college, you will struggle to study as well.

No breakfast also means you will be more irritable and be short-tempered, and generally struggle in terms of energy levels throughout the day, becoming very tired indeed during the afternoon.

For every excuse you may make up for not eating breakfast, there’s about 10 more good excuses TO eat breakfast.

Things off the top of my head include raising your metabolism, which means the very important rate you BURN calories which means how quickly your body fat is going to disappear!!!

Other good things will include having MUCH more energy, very important if you want to be successful in your day.

How about having a good digestive system, it IS good for you going regular to the toilet believe it or not and your body needs to function well INSIDE as well as outside!

People who eat breakfast have always been proven to have healthier levels of weight and body fat than those who don’t. There are numerous studies to back this up. Eating breakfast alone is such a great catalyst for your day!

Breakfast also stops you having from wild binges. If you start off your day with healthy energy levels, you feel full, you are likely to have a healthier attitude to food full stop. Food is there for you to be enjoyed and savoured and is not the enemy.

Make the best start to the day you can by getting your breakfast in within one hour of rising.

Twitt
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Tuesday, 9th November

We go over the ways to get into shape and how to stay there all the time on this blog. We develop plans and discuss when things go wrong as well as things go right. It doesn’t matter how many times we go over the correct way to do things, it still seems as if many of you “get lost” on your quest to get active, stay active and create long lasting good health and fitness.

When we do most things from DIY to fitness, we tend to do things “our own way” or our own version of the right way to do things.

Cyril this week has commented he needs to get back to eating properly, or finally settle into a sustainable healthy eating plan because he knows the great value of this. He says he needs to be drinking more water, something he knows that has clear benefits but is not as consistent as he should be.

He also knows that he should be doing his resistance work at least a couple of times a week, and is eager to get it back in to his schedule. Riding the bike is no problem for him, and long may that continue!!

So you can see it is so easy not to do the simple things that will get you into shape time after time. People get good at things when they practice a lot. Most of you i should imagine are pretty good at brushing your teeth, simply because you’ve done it a lot (although the dentist will sometimes put you right on the correct way). Most of you will know how to wash your clothes and dry them, because again you’ve done it an awful lot and most of you like smelling good and personal hygiene is important to you and your family.

 Most of you will know how to get up on time for work, because it has become routine and you won’t get paid if you don’t  show up for work!! Getting up on time also gives you a purpose for your day and your life in general, human beings respond well to routines and having targets and challenges in their lives.

The secret really is to make your exercise plan firmly a part of your week without fail. Shopping for good food should be the norm and not something you do in january only to get rid of the excess christmas pounds. With a concerted effort, living a healthy lifestyle will become the norm and the way you live your life.

Those of you who don’t do anything right now, i urge you to try it and i guarantee you will feel SO much better for it almost immediately. Getting on a programme that will increase your health can be started anytime, anywhere without any cost. It’s never too late to start and how about today?!!! Don’t wait for the new year as you can and will make substantial progress right up until christmas as long as you put your mind to it and commit to a healthier life.

The time is now, lets make it happen!!!

Twitt
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This is when the work is done!

A dull day in november it may be in terms of weather anyway, but days like today are exactly the type of days when you need to be putting all the hard work in if you really want to look fantastic coming up to christmas!!!

The most  important sessions are the ones you never really feel like doing, and once you remember that mantra, you will be much more motivated by days like today. Days like today are also days when you think of summer believe  it or not! It seems way off but the hard work is really put in now for next summer, as there’s no such thing of overnight success in this game, and every bit of progress you get is definitely well-earned!!!!

This time of year is also about finding out how tough you are, and whether you have desire and determination needed to change your body, change your energy levels and change your ambitions so you can be in superior health!!

Another reason to feel a bit smug with yourself this time of year is that finding out you are one of the few who actually exercises outside this time of year. If you are running, walking, cycling etc on a day like this, you are guaranteed not to meet many people out on the way!!! This shows to me and it should show yourself that YOU ARE committed and dedicated to changing your appearance and really focused on looking and feeling good.

This feeling inside alone is enough to brighten up the most dreary of days! You are investing in your future right now, today the 3rd of november if you get out there today and do a workout or stay inside and do a workout. You are really setting yourself apart from the crowd who would have thrown in the towel by now. You are different and you should celebrate that fact!!!

When i said there was 12 weeks to christmas a while ago, some of you probably laughed and thought it was a long time away. Now the facts are that its only SEVEN weeks away and how much close are you to your health and fitness goals!!! If you havent taken it seriously, you STILL have time so lets not waste another minute!!!

Twitt
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Stop pretending and let’s do this thing!!!!

How many times do you hear in the media that they don’t know anything about exercise, they don’t really know what diet to be on, which exercise equipment to use, how long to exercise for, what the “best” exercise is for their stomach’s etc etc!

I’ve pretty much had a gutful of all that rubbish. Did these people have a good formal education to get on air, or were they just picked up from the street one day? Which one was it? Some are very good of course and im talking about the airheads who occupy some radio and TV stations. There’s so much trashy information out there these days, perhaps thats they they are really getting confused by all these false promises by so called “guru’s” or charlatans as they should be called!! Its time to stop falling for all that rubbish so lets call an end to it right now!!!

Well lets fix this thing once and for all because im not putting up with that rubbish any longer!!!

You have to do your resistance training!! Whats that mean? It means working against resistance and includes press ups, squats, arm dips, weight training etc and you need to be putting in this type of workout THREE times a week, just like coronation street, monday, wednesday and friday!! Pick 6-8 exercises and you need to do around 3 circuits of this. See the workout section of examples. These will tighten up your body no end, make your body VERY efficient at burning fat, exactly what you want to be doing. Running and walking will never re-shape your body, working against resistance DEFINITELY will!!!

You need to GET OUT at least twice a week and YES, EVEN IN THIS WEATHER!!! You WILL feel better afterwards!!! Getting out in the fresh air i meant!!

You need to walk up hills if you can, you need to run shorter distances but with more purpose, you can cycle in daylight hours and enjoy the many cycle paths around here, YOU NEED TO DO THIS!!! This is ALL about making you FEEL BETTER!!!

You need to eat every 3-4 hours, breakfast, lunch, evening meals and snack twice mid-morning and mid-afternoon healthily on fruit and nuts etc. Plenty of ideas in the diet/food section. This is not being a pig, this is keeping your energy levels constant and this will help you to avoid hunger pangs which can often blow your diet!

You need to give sleep some attention too, try and get your head down early in the week and get a good nights sleep. Dont use wine to send you to sleep, its the worst kind of sleep you can get, its not cool or trendy in the week to get trashed on wine, plus it will ONLY make you put on body fat and make you hold water/get bloated, not very good side effects!!!!

There are some basics there and sorry for the rant, because after all this time, its time to let you know that anyone can do this, and if you’re not achieving what you want in life right now, its time to do it and right now, no excuses, no trendy talk, quit all the “‘i’ll do it tomorrow” rubbish, its never going to work with that attitude.

Its a dull rainy tuesday, but still a great day to change your life around!!!!

Twitt