Wednesday, 14th August
We talk all the time about the importance of trying to keep improving your physical performances, how about improving your eating habits?!!
When someone starts off with me for the first time, I like to guide them into things gently or you are likely to ask far too much off individuals in a short period of time.
An easy start for me to give someone is to make just one minor improvement per week.
The usual one I ask for is to try and eat breakfast every day. Believe it or not, most people I bump into tend not to eat breakfast at all, or eat something full of sugar or saturated fat, or most likely both!
So to get to eat the individual to eat well every day all day is quite unrealistic.
Making small changes each and every week will lead to a monumental change over just
six weeks!
Then I move onto the subject of properly hydrating one’s self. If someone can just drink more water throughout the day, then I know that this change alone will make such a difference to the person concerned. They will feel better, look better, burn more body fat and perform better in their workouts full stop.
Then I move onto sleep. Making the effort to get to bed earlier, especially in the week is paramount in order to recover from exercise, and set yourself up for the next day again.
Next is lunch and evening meal. You need to put healthy protein sources in there for your meal, healthy slow-burning carbs and a healthy array of vegetables. These meals can be similar (unless you have a packed lunch when wholemeal bread/pittas are likely to be choice of the day).
Then the snacks come into observation and how you are powering yourself through the day in terms of energy. Natural snacks such as fruit, dried fruit, nuts etc will work for you far better than sugary/fatty snacks every time!
This is a very brief description of the small changes you need to undertake to look and feel your best, so up to you when you implement all of this to get results as soon as possible!
Tuesday, 13th August
You are taught to eat your greens as a young kid and most of you probably hated that advice!
Then you get a little older and you start to appreciate the advice.
Taking advice is never easy, and it is good to second guess advice, because not all of it will be good.
Sorting out the good advice from the bad advice is not always easy, but if you rely on science to do it for you, then you cannot go wrong.
You know that eating plenty of greens in your weekly diet, and remembering to put them in your weekly shopping trolley is important. There are numerous independent studies to back this up, and their value to your body in all sorts of different ways.
Science tells us that weight training is vital for increasing strength, increasing muscle tone, increasing our metabolic rate, and increasing bone density, amongst many other benefits. You need to practice it at least twice a week.
Science also tells us that getting your heart rate going is excellent for us, in terms of benefits to our hearts and lungs, as well as improving our circulation in our bodies.
These are simple examples of getting it right, and using solid evidence to help us decide what we should be doing. Despite this evidence, many people fail to implement this advice every single week which will bring undoubted benefits.
This is why faddy diets fool many people every day promising a quick fix WITHOUT any science behind it.
Doing things the scientific way may be a little harder to do, but at least you know its going to work!!!
Monday, 12th August
After experiencing a camping weekend, it’s then you realize how important fresh air is and how important it is for a number of your body’s functions.
Anyone who has spent the weekend in a tent will first of all realize that it makes you feel more tired than usual. You tend to be more active and you tend to do a lot more walking and running around.
The fresh air will have a great effect on your sleep, and you will feel in general on top of the world after the whole experience.
This is why it’s important to workout outside and inside. If you combine the both, then you will have all the benefits.
With our climate, its natural to assume we will be training a lot inside during much of the year. Therefore, its vital to get out and about in terms of everything, working out or anything you do, just GET OUTSIDE!!
Studies done on individuals who get a lot of outside time tend to be more optimistic in their outlook too, as well as usually being a lot healthier due their activities outside.
It’s august 12th, and although we are still in summer, you know its not going to be that long before the nights draw in and its gets a lot colder and wetter!
Make the most of the excellent conditions right now and you will be automatically feeling better by the end of the day even!
Thursday, 8th August
Training without a certain level of commitment will not work if you’re interested in really progressing and hitting our monthly targets.
For example, if I think an individual needs to train three times a week and do one run without me, so they end up doing four sessions every week, then they should definitely improve AS LONG as they do the workouts requested at a certain level of performance.
I am happy to say that this indeed DOES happen very much most of the time.
Then now and again, you have the individuals who struggle to do some or most of the workouts without me.
Then the downward spiral starts.
When I usually measure people every 28 days, the measurements start getting worse. If that person stops losing body fat completely and starts putting weight on, then I have to confront the individual involved and ask them what’s going on.
After an initial denying that they are missing workouts or eating badly, then the truth comes out. All sorts of reasons are usually to blame, but the facts remain that they are not getting the progress they want.
Usually we can find a way out of it and get the individual back on track, but occasionally its worth asking the person involved if they really want to get fit and healthy, and is anything I can do going to work at this particular time?
As I said, 99% of people knuckle down and start hitting it hard again, but the odd person needs to reassess and get their priorities straight again.
This is why constant measuring is vital in keeping the individual in the right place physically AND mentally.