Posted on

Monday 24th October

As the urgency increases towards christmas, just 8 weeks sunday away, you had better be showing some urgency towards your health too!!!

Whats more important? The christmas tree or your health? Rhetorical question to most but not to all i’m sad to say!!!

If you are indeed struggling with your weight, you may be eating too much do you think? There’s a fair chance on that statement being right and the big question is what can you do about it now?!!!

You should for starters have a pretty decent idea by now on what works for your body and what doesn’t? That shouldnt be rocket science if you have been reading on here for a while. The hard part comes when you realise the moment you have put on weight, and WHY!!!

The putting on weight process never starts quickly, its usually more of a gradual process.

Weekend pizza on a saturday turns into a regular event, and sometimes turns into all weekend.

For example, you could do some shopping every week and sometimes go in the local market, you pick up some welsh cakes and your long lost love of welsh cakes is suddenly rekindled, and you start making them a regular feature of your weekly shop!!!

This means your sweet tooth is all of a sudden well and truly alive!

Then you will excuse yourself a bag of chips in the week, and some fish, pretending the fish is healthy even though it has a mountain of batter on it!! They are nice but can heavily disrupt your fat loss programme.

Then plain porridge isnt good enough for you, it has to be the one with sugar and syrup.

Then your one day a week alcohol turns into a saturday and wednesday affair, because “you are stressed”.

Your vegetables suddenly have to be soaked in salt, because they are “too plain”, so your whole eating programme goes from plain to highly “flavoured”.

These type of changes can make the difference between your body feeling “like a sponge” and something to be proud of.

Depends on what you want, but we both know which result takes more effort.

Get back on the right road and start being all that you could have been, and your diet is a key area for all of this to happen so lets cut out all the “flavourings” and make it happen!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 13th October

A story in the newspapers yesterday has brought many questions and may be needlessly so, but they must be answered so here goes.

RUNNING MAKES YOU FAT! Was the headline in at least The Independent and probably the daily mail (the most sensationalist paper of the lot! And interesting to know that they supported the nazi party before world war 2!).

The bottom line of the article was that many people been interviewed were complaining that they never lost weight for years despite their running efforts.

They developed bad knees and backs, sometimes weak ankles and the results were never worth it!!!!

The stories kept on coming in like people obsessed with distorting the truth.

If you carry too much weight, you WILL be putting a strain on by running on hard surfaces and longer distances. This will affect your joints and back and the pain will be magnified that much more if you wear poor trainers.

A 200 pound runner will put 600 pounds of pressure through their joints because of the pounds, so its important to do everything right.

The biggest thing I haven’t mentioned here is FOOD INTAKE.

What was common throughout these stories was that none of them had really changed their diet. They were still eating lots of sugar and lots of saturated fat.

Another common factor was that they would have a big “treat” if they did well on a run, and that often included a trip to a fast food outlet, or to the cake shop!!!

It could be an excuse to drink more alcohol or to eat a fried breakfast.

The story continued to run and this was the recurring theme. People really thought that they could run off anything, and they deserved to be in shape despite eating badly.

The fact is you cannot “run off” a bad diet, the calories will be too overwhelming. Say you have a great run and you burn 400-600 calories, that can easily be outdone by a couple of beers of glasses of wine, you can easily eat 1000 calories at McDonalds!!!! Or more!!

Unless you change your diet to good fresh natural foods, you’re always going to be one of those who may complain that “running makes you fat”!!!!

Change today and get the results  you really deserve!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday 11th October

Obstacles to your year end targets for your health and fitness are often many, some you can something about, some you can’t.

In the can’t category are illnesses and injuries, both often fall at exactly the wrong time just when you have started getting a run of form in usually!! These happen from time to time and we just have to ride them out, resting completely in most cases but we know we will come back from them.

Then there’s unavoidable family issues that have to be sorted before you continue, but even here if you get up early enough in a day, of course you can still get some exercise in. Stress comes to all of us, and exercise will often be the best way of helping with that stress, and not alcohol or excess food as some do.

Some things you can do a lot about are missed workouts or bad time management. “Something came up” or “i had to nip into town” or “it was too cold, too wet or too hot” are not excuses that are going to cut it with anyone, and are exactly that-excuses!!!!

Your level of desire has more to do with being in shape, and this is how people who run into illness or injury usually come back very strong after it. They miss feeling fit and energetic, they miss being in shape and feeling their body a lot tighter, so they will usually do anything just to get back working out hard again.

If your level of desire is low and you simply think by joining a gym, you are somehow going to get in shape with no real plan, then you’re wasting your time.

The bottom line is that anything can be overcome and these seemingly impossible circumstances should be always seen as challenges and not insurmountable!!! Life will never be easy all the time, or even some of the time. Expect stress and a stress on your time too, just make sure you plan your workouts into your schedule, instead of finding ways not to do them!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday 10th October

Saturated fat is always the bad boy when it comes to having a bad rap in the press, and with good reason. If too much of that stuff blocks your arteries, you can have a heart attack anytime unfortunately, and is always a danger when consumed at regular intervals.

The other bad twin of the food family is refined sugar and its existence in a lot of foods, this is why i always try to encourage you to eat well! If you consume a lot of products packaged up too much, you can bet your life it has regined sugar in it.

Most cereal boxes are loaded with refined sugar, this is a fact and far from being your best start to the day, it can end up your most sugary start to the day and really trip up your day before its even started. Fruit and fibre for instance is loaded with refined sugar when examined in tests, but tries to mention “your healthiest start to the day” all over the box. Porridge is always a better choice, giving you an excellent slow release of energy and avoiding the temptations of yet more sugar!!!

Anyone who has had to do a diabetes test and carried that thing around when you prick your finger and continually test your blood sugar levels after food, will definitely know what im talking about!!!! Refined sugar is in a lot of foods, too numerous to mention here and the usual suspects contain the most, white bread, biscuits of all kinds, sweets and most man made food, if not all!!! That test is very valuable and any chance you get to take it, the eye opener you get will be extremely revealing and educational for sure!!!

There are refined sugars in fruit of course, and this is why even fruit should be eaten in moderation.

This is also why i always recommend you dillute your organge juice, instead of having a big glass, this brings your refined sugars down substantially while still containing the benefits of the juice.

So its saturated fat and REFINED SUGARS, they are the real bad boys of your food intake, guaranteed to stop fat loss in its tracks and deprive you of any sustained energy!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday 26th September

Since i have had a few texts on my last post, i think i should expand my comments on the development of the fitness industry!!

Here’s the next thing that has collapsed in the fitness industry! Those gyms and gym owners (usually chains) who proclaim to their new members (new direct debits they only see it as!) that they have the most treadmills in town, the most bikes in town and the most steppers in town!!!! Bravo i say!!!! But this is the main reason on why they are going bankrupt in their droves!!

In the states, the likes of gold gym, planet fitness, 24 hour fitness etc etc, will have been opening around 50 gyms a year with massive capacity. 50 treadmills, bikes and steppers come at a huge cost in many ways.

They forgot the fact that although they could intitially attract massive membership, those members had to get in shape. Having lots and lots of treadmills doesnt really do it!!! Lots of bikes doesn’t either!!! This is brainless fitness with programmes designed by men in suits, who had brains for figures and not how to get people in shape!

They forgot the fact that treadmills can be hugely boring, hamster wheels to some in gym speak, and only gave part of a result!

So what happened is you had everyone on treadmills and bikes, the weight room got ignored and all the stuff that really gets you in incredible shape, the medicine balls, swiss balls, dumbbells, sprints, bodyweight exercises etc were usually ignored.

Then when people realised they got bored of treadmills, they abondoned them, AND the gym AND their membership!!! Proper training WAS NOT explained!!!

The gym then realises that in the states anyway, they were paying $300 thousand a month in hire fees for all of these machines, the bottom line wasnt coming in anymore!!! Guess what happens next? They reduce their membership and so the decline goes on, then the filing for bankruptcy happens….at record pace in the states.

The same has started in this country, with a couple of the most famous chains either bankrupt or on life support.

It doesnt give me any pleasure to report such a decline but there is better news!

In the USA, 8 out of the best 10 gyms voted for by all industry magazines are performance related gyms, by this i mean they actually GET YOU IN SHAPE!!!! Wow, what a concept, they actually give you GREAT SERVICE, Wow what a concept, they actually TELL YOU WHAT TO EAT, Wow what a concept!!!!

They work with weights, medicine balls, swiss balls, things that will actually get you in shape, who’d have thought it!!!!

And guess what, you havent got the 300k a month overhead!!!!

The bottom line is that you HAVE TO GET PEOPLE HEALTHY AND IN SHAPE, just having a gym card doesnt cut it anymore, people are willing to pay, but not for rubbish!!! Human beings are INDIVIDUALS, and not robots, they are not perfect and there is a different programme for every body.

Times are hard but i know a record number of people realising this, and you are most welcome to send your questions to fitness@kerimckibbin.co.uk

Twitt