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Getting leaner means eating smaller

 To answer some of your questions i have had this week, there is one theme running throughout.

Its vital for you now not to get too downhearted about your lack of weight loss if you’re having a bit of an up and down time. If you have been signing in most days, you have made significant improvements lately and for a long time now so its no time to quit and go off track, you’ve come too far.

If you have put an enormous amount of effort in your training and eating, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you are burning more calories, burning more body fat in the vigorous nature of your workouts. You have complete confidence that you are getting fitter and healthier, now we have to fix the area which is dragging some of you down by your texts and emails

Portions size and inconsistency of eating is the area you need to look at, and getting some very stable habits into your life. Lighter lunches one day, then heavier lunches the next will not let you get used to the same desirable quantity of foods. Your body will like regular, smaller portions and will make you lose weight if done on a regular basis. Your body likes stability.

This one area is making a lot of you deeply unhappy when it comes to measuring and weighing times, and all that unhappiness is not worth going through if it makes you feel like that. If you change your eating habits that much more again, YOU WILL DO IT AND YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!!

Some of you said you don’t eat the chocolate, the chips, the crisps, all the stuff everyone else is eating around you, as your priorities are being fit and healthy, and you should be proud of yourself showing such control, when in the past you would have caved in and joined everyone else so you have moved forwards significantly further than even you previously thought.

Many of you show guts and determination EVERY TIME you workout in adverse conditions (snow, ice and extreme heat), and the times you don’t really feel like it in the first place, some of this dedication has to go in now during the private moments when you’re struggling to control your eating binges, when some damage can be done.

Even if you eat smaller portions, and often you will still have much bigger portions, you’re not really teaching your body that you want to get smaller. You won’t be teaching your stomach to get smaller and smaller because you will still keep your overall long term capacity for food quite high. If you eliminate these bigger portions for good, you will be saying to your body that the old days are over, and that you want to get down to your desired weight/body fat levels very quickly indeed.

Smaller portions cannot support higher weight, remember that and if you 100% begin eating like much smaller and leaner people, you will struggle to start with but your body will get used to it, YOUR NEW BODY THAT IS SO LET’S MAKE IT HAPPEN AND BE PROUD OF YOURSELF AGAIN, you should be proud of your workouts and athletic ability, but imagine how good you will be if you didn’t carry all the excess weight you don’t need in your life anymore!

Its time to make it happen and that time is now! The fittest people aren’t always the leanest, so workouts don’t do it all, healthy structured eating counts big time when it comes to being in shape and at your very best so let’s do it!

Twitt
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Stay full

Dieting is never a good word to use, as it scares the hell out of most of us. It’s often associated with going hungry, so feeling full is one of the best strategies you can take on to make the whole process of losing fat tolerable!

Most of your hunger pangs and cravings happen in your mind, and not your body’s sudden urge to consume huge amounts of food. Watching TV is a good way to get hungry and snack on things you know you shouldn’t!

The best way not to make rash decisions with your food intake is not to get so hungry in the first place.

Ways to stay fuller start with water intake believe it or not, not only does it burn body fat and make your insides work well, it also makes you feel full.

Eating fibre makes you feel full too as it takes a while before it gets through your system. You also get better cholesterol, better blood sugar levels and better intestinal health, an all round winner of a strategy!

What about times when you get uncontrollable urges to eat  kebab, ice cream, chocolate etc? You need an emergency low-fat stash of healthy snacks to counter this, or your whole diet is going to come off the rails! I know some people who keep emergency snacks but they’re usually chocolate! If you keep chocolate in the house as an emergency, you’re going to have that “emergency” once a day so don’t buy them in the first place.

Healthy snacks include nuts, any fruit, lean pieces of beef, chicken, turkey and the occasional protein bar.

Other ways to avoid hunger bangs include staying busy, if you just hang around watching tv, you’re going to struggle big time, do something and you don’t think about food.

Eating at regular times will always help, if you know that a meal or snack is just around the corner, you’re not going to be looking to grab food in a haphzard way. Plus, you keep your blood sugar levels steady which is always good.

Don’t forget sweeter, sugary foods can re-ingnite your sugary taste buds, making you want more and more and this creates new “bad” habits!

Exercise doesn’t only burn calories, it suppresses appetite too to a degree so you’re not feeling hungry all the time.

Keep your protein intake up, eating protein in most meals fill you up, and helps keep you lean and your desire for sugary foods way down.

Staying full is vitally important, and help you make the consistent good choices you need to be in shape!

Twitt
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Massive efforts (only sometimes!)

Making  huge efforts all the time isn’t going to be good for your exercise programme. It is one sure fire way to get fed up of exercise and it soon wears thin in terms of enthusiasm.

We can all pull out all the stops and have amazing efforts in terms of workouts. People do amazing things for charity, and you have to commend them for doing so.

So before you think I’ve gone totally mad, I’ll explain!

A well structured exercise programme aiming to get a 7-8 out of 10 each time you train, will likely be far more successful than workouts now and again demanding 10 out of 10 each time. Even champions can’t work at that intensity all the time, they actually periodise their training plan into different sections of the year.

The time when the champions often go flat out is often only 8-12 weeks of the year. The rest of the year is often structured to create a base for the next level up.

That’s why its sensible to focus at steady and gradual improvements. We talk about it all the time, if you can do 5 press ups in week 1, and you can do 25 press ups in week 5, then this is a great example of making progress without working so hard that you’re blue in the face!

You look forward to workouts that don’t have unrealistic challenges in store. They become more enjoyable and you tend to love the whole process more. Going for a run in a scenic location is fun, and exillerating at the same time.

If you approached the same run with maximum intensity every time you did it, and were constantly trying to beat your personal best, you would soon become sick of that and start putting off workouts when your time wasn’t improving.

You should know by now that im all for working out with great intensity, but you have to put it in its proper context.

Those who did the London marathon a couple of weeks ago will have spent many months or even years training for it.

Those who did the Mumbles Childline Triathlon with us definitely worked hard for months before.

These two events were examples of pinnacle’s in people’s sporting lives.

The reality is that you can’t train like that forever, you have to scale it back for a while, and look at fresh goals.

The bottom line is that you’re still exercising every week, you’re eating well every week and to me, that amounts to being truly successful as you’re aiming to be fit and healthy for the rest of your life, not so many people get to achieve that unfortunately!

Keep working hard!

Twitt
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Uncertainty

The worst thing we have in our lives is uncertainty.

We are sometimes not certain how much money we will earn, not certain how much our bills will be, how much will our next car cost, will we meet our mortgage payments, how our health will be perhaps being the biggest etc etc.

The stock market for instance has hated all the uncertainty of the liberal/conservative fiasco, nobody likes uncertainty full stop!

Most if not all of you show uncertainty in your health and fitness programme at times, and some of you have posted here not knowing which way to turn at times.

You have been encouraged by others and hopefully by myself on here, because we all have had doubts, we all have uncertainties running through us at times, and its how we react to all of that worry that determines where we end up.

Make the ultimate wrong decision such as going on a mega-binge in times of stress and it can lead to a longer decline if not sorted out straight away. Weight gain ALWAYS leads to feeling worse than you ever should have done in the first place!

If you have a longer term plan and  true understanding of what it takes, then you are likely to react favourably under times of great uncertainty. This comes from experience though and you shouldn’t be hard on yourself if you make mistakes, all of us make mistakes and those who say they don’t are liars!

I would rather make a thousand mistakes but as long as i learned from most of them, i would know i have become a better person because of them, and are likely to make better decisions in future in times of doubt and uncertainty.

We all are learning and those who think they know it all are usually just that, know it all’s, and we all know a few but they are usually regarded as fools or to be pitied.

Whatever doubts you have, you know there is plan and way out of it, lots of resources on here to encourage you on the right path so let’s give it a go and be the success you always knew you could be!!

Twitt
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up and down standards

We talked about the importance of filling in the gaps yesterday, and how important it was not to take extended breaks from your training, as often it is so hard to get back into it again!

What about your own individual workout standards though? Do you know them off by heart now? Do you keep a workout diary to make sure you havent slipped back? How important are those workout standards to you?

Lets start at the beginning.

When you first start training, i like to start everyone off slow. For example, if you start off with 4 press ups first time, then that’s the beginning and where you should judge your progress from.

If we fast forward 6 weeks later, and i catch up with you and are thrilled to see you are doing 20 press ups, that means you are now doing 5 times the number you first started off with, this is REAL progress and you should be pleased with yourself.

If your favourite run takes you 20-23 minutes, then staying in this good range or even pushing 19 minutes can be regarded as good progress.

What happens though if the press ups start sliding back to maybe 10?

What happens if the run takes you 28-30 minutes all of a sudden?

There can be a number of factors such as illness of course but barring that, the reasons are likely to be over-eating, over-drinking, not sleeping enough or simply missing lots of workouts.

The big progress will be judged to have largely stopped, and you have no direction in your training once more, leaving you lacking motivation and inspiration to carry on most of the time.

This is why your standards are all important.

Workouts should not be done in a haphazard manner, there has to be a plan and routine. This plan also needs to show progress and this is done by challenging yourself on a weekly basis. If you have the desire to personally improve, then motivation can be easy.

If you are suffering more lack of motivation, perhaps you need to re-visit why you are training in the first place, and what being healthy and being in great shape would mean/really means to you.

A REALLY good idea is to keep a workout diary and write down your workouts, or follow the list of exercises you are suppoed to be doing, and recognise that keeping to your usual high standard is not only desirable, but is vital to your over health and progress.

Try and assess your progress over a week, and if things have gone wrong, don’t dwell on them too much, just go out and fix them. Everyone had good and bad workouts, as long as the trend if upwards though, you can be more than happy that you’re getting fitter and healthier. Use the opportunity you have right now to hit your health and fitness with real passion and drive, no putting it off or leaving it until “another day”, let’s do it and make yourself proud of your performances!

No up and down standards, let’s keep them right up there!!!

Twitt