Posted on

19th april 2011

Blueberries, strawberries, cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, brazils, kiwi fruit, carrots, broccoli, apples, oranges are all great examples on how to deal with the colds, flu and sorts of illnesses sweeping the country at the moment.

All of these foods offer remarkable support for your immune system in all sorts of ways.

I would much rather take these foods in every day, than lower my immune system and accept the seemingly inevitable of colds flu etc and in general feeling run down, it doesn’t have to be that way if you eat a lot of fresh natural foods and exercise well throughout the week.

This is always a powerful combination is keeping your general feeling of wellbeing at its highest level.

Contrast that with individuals who consume alcohol most days, eat ready meals or low quality food, and eat little or no fruit and vegetables.

If you have been on both sides of those examples, I don’t need to tell you then how good it feels to be eating well every day and how energy giving it is to have good quality exercise in your life. These are facts, and everyone who lives this kind of healthy lifestyle will testify them to be true!!!

When you are exercising hard, you also need these foods to replace nutrients lost during exercise. Good quality foods are needed even more when engaged in tough physical efforts because you want your body to repair itself in a good way, and not feed it junk because as you break your body down by exercise, you want it built up with high quality nutrients and not low grade chemical junk found in low quality meals such as ready meals and all of their cheap copy cat products on the  market!

Its all fine to concentrate on looking lean and worry about the slightest weight gain but surely its far more important to look and feel good ON THE INSIDE?!!!

If you look after your insides and feed it with quality fresh and natural food, your body will look after you a thousand times more!!!

Give it a go!!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 25th 2011

Okay, so we have covered your cycling and running over the last couple of posts, but hows your inside work/gym work going?

You know how it should be going and this doesn’t involve hanging around talking around to everyone while you “train”! Taking it easy on yourself is not acceptable unless there are extraordinary conditions, or you’re just starting out.

There are a few things and indeed, mistakes i see every time i’m in a gym.

Number one if you’re working out with weights (and everyone should!), there’s too much rest in between sets, sometimes even 5 minutes, this is a painfully slow and ineffective way to train and get into shape, i should correct that statement because you’re never going to get into shape training that slow. I would assume there’s far more talking going on than training, and this is always a bad sign!!!

Number two is training with too many people, by that i mean there’s sometimes two training together and thats great, but if theres three of you and you’re all friends and want to train together, it can’t work because you will have too much rest in between sets. You will struggle to get any intensity up, so keep it to yourself and one other if possible.

When you train and there’s just two of you, try to do one set, then your partner does the next, then immediately again you do the next and your partner goes straight away. Try to keep this up throughout the whole workout and you will be out of puff and had a very beneficial bout of exercise, which will automatically lead to fat loss and seriously toning up your body, which is what most people want of course.

Avoid the fancy exercises! By this i mean you should pick the exercises that have most benefits, and they are usually the toughest!!!! The basic exercises are usually the most beneficial because they make you expend a lot of energy each time, meaning you burn more calories, speed up your metabolic rate, in other words, 24 hours a day you will be burning more calories a day, more body fat every day and keeping your body closer to the fat burning machine you really dreamed of!!! Yes, it is possible!!

Have a great weekend and lets exercise with purpose, its all about results so lets do it!!

Twitt
Posted on

March 23rd 2011

If you are out on a bike regularly training, you might want to consider a slightly different approach.

A lot of riders go for the big heavy gears because they like to feel the power. Most riders have done this for many years, including myself by the way. The last few years though, I have changed my ways and encouraged many others to do the same.

If you have some kind of speedometer, then you should perhaps take a close look at it and in particular the revolutions per minute part, or RPM as its more commonly known as on your machine. You will also find these on all stationery bikes, and what I’m about to say will naturally apply to both stationery and more traditional bikes you will use outside of course.

Most of us when we cycle go for one steady pace and its usually between 60-70 RPM, some even as low as 40-50 I have found. This turns out to be a very ineffective way to ride a bike and can put greater strain on your joints, especially your knees, which is probably why you got on a bike for the first place, to reduce strain on your joints because of its non weight bearing benefits!

The first time you will try and ride at 80 RPM, it will shock you how many gears you will have to shift down on your bike! This is bad for the ego to start with, as you will have based your progress on the bike, especially a stationery bike, on the gear you were using, to shift down seems hard. Its time to forget about all of that because you will be working harder especially when trying to take extra oxygen in, getting less stress on your knees/joints in general and sweating quite a bit more.

If  you can manage to keep the same gear and somehow get 80 RPM, then that’s fantastic but you will obviously notice how you will be working so much harder, and you will be unable to keep it going as long, there really is going to be an amazing difference for you!!

You can also go up from 80 RPM but this is too much of a jump to start with.

Lance Armstrong was one of the most famous riders to use a higher cadence, which is what you are doing when hitting at least 80 RPM, and this way of working makes you work so much harder aerobically, you will be taking much more oxygen in.

The benefits are going to be huge so lets give it a go, and if you cant get there to start with, keep shifting gears down until you can!

Twitt
Posted on

March 22nd

Are you still believing the “low fat” myth on all your shopping trips to the supermarket?

Lets get some facts straight, not all low fat foods are good for you, are low in calories or not going to put body fat on you.

There are plenty of good low fat options such as lean mince when you are about to make spaghetti Bolognese, that can work very well for you. There is low fat milk which takes out the saturated fat in the milk, there is even lower fat versions of chicken for example, so these straight forward examples can work very well for you.

Lets get to the other “low fat” options though!

What about low fat yoghurts? Often these yoghurts are full of sugar and chemicals to give you the sweetened version, which internally is not very good for you. You would be far better off having natural yoghurt with some proper fruit cut up, along with some nuts, a far better choice and far better for your insides.

One of the biggest guilty parties on the low fat claim is cereal boxes. Frosties as we all knoow are coated with lashings of sugar, and not at the top of anyone’s list of healthy cereals, but are marketed as “low fat” so people buy them and think they are somehow going to get into shape by eating them, nothing could be further from the truth.

When you read a label of different foods, you can usually spot the way they get around it. If you look at the carbohydrate part, look underneath and it says “of which sugars” which is the really dangerous part. If a substantial part are of which sugars in terms of carbohydrate, then the food is usually loaded with sugar and WILL NOT help you lose the body fat you want, will only help put it on!!

There are also plenty of times when fat is good of course, such as in fish like salmon, mackerel and trout, this fat is not saturated fat which is the totally unhealthy version. These are good fats your body needs to function really well and are classed as essential.

Also, the fats found in nuts are highly valuable and should be used for snacks, cashews, brazils, hazelnuts and almonds are all great examples of fats that are extremely good for you. They will be flagged up as high fat but as long as you keep these in moderation, such as a small handful per serving, you will be doing your body a lot of good!

Twitt
Posted on

March 10th

Making a big difference to your physique involves changing your programme every 6 weeks and certainly 12 weeks.

The same can happen with your food. Just because you change your food around, it doesn’t have to mean you change your diet from one faddy diet to another either, it just means exploring different foods, different recipes and a willingness to test your taste buds in different ways.

For example, I was talking to somebody yesterday who was on a very well known diet some of you have mentioned before.

She said that she wasn’t allowed two weetabix and milk on one particular day, as well she wasn’t allowed beans on wholemeal toast another day, what RUBBISH!!!!!!!! This is madness of the highest order and please don’t tell me that you have paid for all of this rubbish?

The lady in question quickly went back to her tried and tested way of eating of if its healthy, then its going to be good for you. You cannot go wrong this way.

You also cannot go wrong if you have followed this healthy way of eating all week, and if you want to sample an occasional treat the weekend, then there’s no problem at all? You have worked hard and well at your food all week and you deserve a treat here and there, as long as its not a whole gateau for example!!!

There was another good sign yesterday, a 12 year old I have been training with some weight to lose and was addicted to sugary/fatty foods has now made great strides with his eating and training, and is looking now like a much healthier version of himself, and hes much happier for it too.

The test yesterday came with his pancakes, for the first time yesterday he had NO SUGAR on his pancakes, because he didn’t feel the need to. Another positive was that he said the pancakes didn’t taste half as good as they used to, because his taste buds have changed and sugar is not a major part of his life anymore!!!

I had some pancakes too, made with wholemeal and stonegrain flour, 2 eggs, nearly a pint of milk and they were delicious. NO SUGAR, NO BUTTER AND NO SALT. If you think that is horrible, perhaps you are still addicted to sugar and not getting the results you want?

Time to change!

Twitt