Posted on

Sunday, 23rd November

It’s always great to talk about being successful all the time, but often you learn more when you don’t succeed all the time, when you don’t win every time, and when you stick with it when it would be far easier to give up.

Learning from our mistakes is all important, and being able to climb out of a hole is character building, and makes you a far stronger person.

Our most successful members have a real “life story” to tell, how they overcame adversity, many hit rock bottom and somehow they managed to fight again, find new resolve, dig very deep and start climbing out of a very bad place. These individuals become leaders who constantly encourage other members.

These life stories inspire me and all of us every day, and having brand new examples on a daily basis of how someone has become successful using real life strategies helps us encourage and develop others, so they become the next real life success story.

Putting continuous effort into getting into shape isn’t for everyone, because it is hard work, often requires you to dig deep, and makes you look at yourself far more deeply than you ever thought, it’s then you really see what you are made of.

Being humble and never giving up despite everything else going on at the same time are the most valuable traits you can develop.

Setbacks are going to happen along the way in your fitness and health journey, but if you keep putting the effort in no matter what, everything soon turns around and you will always make a strong comeback as long as you keep an eye on the finish line.

We have no “show offs” or “posers” at the gym, we have no room for people who don’t want to encourage others, a very positive environment is vital to lead others to success, and help everyone fulfil their true potential to create a huge quality of life in every area.

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 19th November

Keri’s Leaner faster stronger

Seasonal and local – day 2

Is out of season food healthy or not?

Unless you live a life like Barbara and Tom from the good life, tending to your fruit and vegetables day in day out, you probably have little knowledge of seasonal food and it’s health benefits.

Since eating within the seasons is the advice given by health professionals these days, it makes you wonder if eating out of season food is in fact healthy or bad for us?

From a health perspective, food that’s not in season has been grown in huge greenhouses or shipped from warmer climates travelling thousands of miles before arriving in our supermarkets. This has many consequences for the consumer. Firstly, they are picked before ripeness so that it can endure the long distance shipping experience. This means that it’s nutrient profile is lower than a local and ripe product. Vitamin C for instance, which is abundant in most fruit and vegetables, is notoriously unstable and so would be lost in transit so to speak, making out of season food less nutritious.

Also transporting produce sometimes requires them to be zapped by a burst of radiation to kill germs. Preservatives such as wax is also added before refrigeration.

Taste wise there is absolutely no comparison. Locally grown food tastes amazing, has great texture and looks appetising. Most local food grown by farmers are also healthier due to having less pesticides and chemicals used for preservation too.

Air miles is another issue for many people. Local food usually travels only a few miles from farm to table ensuring less pollution to the environment.

Another quite interesting argument for eating seasonal is the fact that our bodies actually crave seasonal food due to the weather. Have you noticed how you fancy salads in the summer and crave stews and soups made of root vegetables in winter?

It’s all great saying that local and seasonal is better,tastier and cheaper, however how practical is it to eat like this all the time? If you lived in Italy or California, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, Burry Port however?

Unless you love pigging out on carrots and caulis for the whole winter, you are going to get pretty bored very quickly. Not many fruits are in season in cold and wet Wales in winter.

Our advice would be to try and eat as much seasonal food as you can to get a good amount of natural vitamins and nutrients, as well as getting a tastier and better value product. However supplement with imported fruit and veg as well. We have no intention of giving up bananas anytime soon as they are a great addition to the sports diet.

Seasonal food are in abundance in supermarkets these days, as they do try and cater for popular demand. Many supermarkets buy produce from farmers in Wales and the UK these days, you can usually find the grower written on the label.

Another option for tired and busy workers is frozen fruit and vegetables.

Studies show that these are actually healthier in terms of vitamins and nutrients than many fresh out of season produce, due to the fact they have been picked and frozen within hours, and so have not lost any of their nutrients. It also means you can eat strawberries for instance all year round.

Choosing frozen also means less wastage for the family too. No more shrinking yellowing broccoli lurking in the back of the fridge, which everyone forgot about!

Here is a list of what’s in season in November, helping you to make good seasonal and local choices in the supermarkets and small local shops.

Eat to train,

Nicola.

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, 17th November

Keri’s Leaner faster stronger challenge

Seasonal and local – day 1

What is seasonal food?

For a long time now we have been hearing posh celebrity chefs and health food experts telling us to eat seasonal and local. This can be extremely frustrating since they rarely explain exactly what that means and how you go about it.

We have been brought up in a generation of supermarkets and processed foods that come in a frozen box or plastic bag. The truth is that we have, as humans lost our connection with nature and more importantly with our food and where it comes from. Walk into any supermarket aisle on any given winter’s day and you will see an abundance of every fruit and vegetable from root vegetables, to asparagus to strawberries and cherries.

However what we don’t realise or understand anymore is that most of those produce doesn’t naturally belong there. Have you ever bought a punnet of strawberries around christmas time, only to find the flesh really hard with a strange white cap near the leaves, instead of the all soft red luscious flesh you would get in the height of summer? One taste of the cardboard like flavour leaves you disappointed and unsatisfied at best. Worse of all, you have ended up spending your hard earned cash on a substandard, tasteless product brought in from abroad only to keep the consumer happy all year round, and money in the till for the supermarket.

The reason the strawberries taste so bad? They are not naturally in season in winter.

Fruit and vegetables naturally grow in cycles, and ripen during a specific season each year. When fruit and vegetables are allowed to ripen naturally, they are at their nutritional best and taste fantastic.

Cherries are ripe and juicy in June so cherries are ‘in season’ in June. Asparagus grows and ripens in spring whilst tomatoes and red berries late summer.

Modern technology means we can buy produce such as strawberries and tomatoes all year round, however this is only possible because they are grown in massive greenhouses, or flown from warmer climates such as Spain, Egypt and Israel. In this case, they are picked before they are ripe and have fully developed their flavours, making for bland and nutritionally substandard produce.

Tomorrow – Out of season food – should I eat it or not?

Eat to train,

Nicola.

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, 3rd November

An old saying is that you need to be willing to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

That moment when you become ultimately successful is amazing when you change your body and mind for the better. That journey though is full of bumps on the road that often tries to throw you off course.

Here’s what I notice just before our most successful members get the huge results they want, something really unique happens.

If you rewind slightly before they get over the finishing line, just before they were about to achieve their greatest successes, they too also go through the self-doubt, the thoughts whether they could carry on or not, whether they were really making the staggering changes that everyone was telling them they were.

Most people we train are very humble people, and sometimes they only believe their success when their clothes are suddenly falling down on them!

They only believe it when people they haven’t seen for a while ask them what the heck they have been doing! The change is often so dramatic that it makes friends comment so much on a regular basis.

It’s a fact that most people when they try to achieve anything in life often quit when their victory and success is only a yard or so away, the final bit of self-belief and seeing it through are so important to complete the journey.

Success comes when you stick it out a bit longer, even when times are tough and you think you can’t get through it.

Change is often uncomfortable but change is the essence of life, and is the main reason why people ask to join our gym. They want change in their lives, and it’s our job to deliver that change, even if it’s very tough at times, I know the individual concerned at the end though will be extremely happy with the results and very proud of their achievements.

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 2nd September

Practicing doesn’t make you perfect, but practicing a lot WILL make you attain a peak performance more often than not.

If you look at your habits every day, then you will realise why you are being successful or not by now surely.

What do you practice most in your day and week?

When was life working out best for you, and which habits did you used to practice on a daily basis back then?

What were you doing? Who were you hanging around with back then?

What were you eating? How often were you getting your training sessions in on a a weekly basis?

Who did you learn most from on a daily basis to create new productive habits? Did you have a coach back then and were you in any kind of programme to get the best out of yourself?

So from this you should be able to realise which habits work best for you, what inspired you to get into shape in the first place and isn’t it time you replicated all of those habits again and got into fantastic shape, both mentally and physically?

You know it’s going to take a lot of hard work to be at your best physically and mentally again, but dig out that roadmap again of how you were at your peak once in your life, and you will soon be getting the very best out of yourself once again.

Your daily and weekly habits will determine how successful you are full stop.

Twitt