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!

Wednesday 28th September

If you have tried missing breakfast in the mistaken belief that you will lose weight, you will soon be in for a big surprise!!

The theory some people use is that they never feel up for breakfast anyway, so may as well save those calories and use them for mid-morning, or even start eating lunch time. Then they eat sometimes sparingly during the afternoon and then usually get home, and then it all goes off!

The person doing this kind of eating programme is usually so ravenous by evening time as they haven’t eaten all day, they usually go mad at 6-7pm!!!

If you’re making food yourself, you will be so hungry you will grab a cheese sandwich or something while you’re cooking!

Then you will always overeat when it comes to the food you are cooking, this is because your blood sugars are so low and you are desperate to get them up again, but probably too desperate and you want to eat a massive portion. Very rarely will you be satisfied with that first portion!! Your body can only handle a certain amount of food per meal, and any over the top portion will get deposited as body fat every time!!!

So the missing breakfast technique is complete folly, and will never work long term, you may have realised that by now!

There are scientific reasons for eating breakfast anyway!

Eating breakfast counts when you eat food within one hour of getting up.

This boosts your metabolism because you’re sending your body a message that it had better assimilate that food ASAP and this gets the fat burning process going nice and early!

This helps your metabolism (the rate your body burns calories) get into overdrive early on.

There have been a massive amount of studies that show that those people who eat breakfast daily always lose more body fat and are able to MAINTAIN a healthy level of body fat for the rest of their lives.

Your choice but you know common sense works!!!

Wednesday 21st September

When you talk to real life people who stay in shape or got into shape, the answers are always a lot simpler than you think.

For example, when you ask some people how they did it, did they cut out carbs? Did they cut out just bread? Did they never drink again? Etc etc!!! The reality as i said is that there are no miracles.

This reality plays out like this-they didnt cut out carbs but didnt eat huge quantities either (they had portion control).

They ate good carbs such as brown rice, wholemeal bread, wholegrain pasta and definitely didnt eat junk food anymore, absolutely NOT those types of carbs!!

When going to restaurants, simple things like not having dessert tend to work they tell me. If a huge plate of food comes your way, then only eat three quarters of it, simple!!

Some successful people eat really well but always have hearty appetites! They get around this by putting quality workouts in and give it everything they have!!! They use this as a very valid excuse to eat heartily, and who can blame them, i have some triathletes and marathon runners who could eat anyone out of house and home!!!

Most if not ALL people in shape i train or know or both never drink in the week, alcohol in the week is a one way ticket towards weight gain and miserable performances in all areas of your life FULL STOP.

Most people in shape never eat late at night, after all where are you going to put all of those extra calories!!!! A very successful strategy that works!!!

These little changes aren’t exactly mind-blowing are they?!!! One thing’s for sure though, they ARE life changing!!!!

Most nutritionists agree that these LITTLE changes make the BIG difference!!!

Time to get a grip, give yourself a better quality of life by fitting these little habits in, and enjoy the massive results to come!!!

Monday 12th September

Having an escape route to relieve life’s tensions has become even more important.

With life’s pressure’s getting bigger and bigger for most people, the escape route in exercise terms has never been so important!

I can think of many people who use exercise as the perfect route.

It could be a bike ride on a more obscure route, it could be a run in the woods, or it could be a simple walk anywhere.

What you find with these options for exericse is that you not only get a good fat burning workout in, you also get some “you time” when you can gather your thoughts and really unwind after the pressure of a hard day, or if you turn it around another way, you can exercise first thing in the morning which is the best preparation for a hard day to come, and seriously helps with the pressures of normal life to come!!!

Everyone has a favourite run or bike ride, or cycle or even swim becomes they become familiar with it.

I have a woman with five children i train who likes nothing better than walking up a really steep route to her friends house, and a walk that used to take her 40 minutes now only takes 20 minutes!!! What once was a pain in the you know what of a run has now become a quick easy walk which she now happens to do more often!!

The best part about the walk is the time out she gets when she can let off steam and think about what went right and what went wrong with her day! Some people use alcohol as this emotional crutch but many, many people i train now use their daily “escape route” as their must do every day.

Nothing better than getting rid of stress and losing  body fat the same time!!!

Thursday 8th September

As winter approaches, and we are definitely in autumn already, it seems as if all the “warmer” type of cooking is very much “in” and the summer salads are very much “out”!

The problem is that when winter food does come in, that seems a big excuse for some people to really slam lots of salt in when it comes to food preparation, and with added sugar in just about everything these days, this is one of worst ways to stay in shape, and weight gain is pretty much a certainty unfortunately.

Once all of this winter food starts becoming a way of life again, the next stage are the famous baggy jumpers and dark colours to try and look “slim”!!!

You can get used to baggy jumpers and we all must have been there at one time or another. Baggy jumpers become addictive because nobody really knows whether you are in shape or not!!!! You enter another world where you think you can get away with anything!!!!

 Baggy jumpers don’t really work the following summer though, unless you like sweating a lot of course, and then a whole winter of eating “winter food” becomes apparent to everyone and this is why crash dieting becomes universally popular in spring!!!!!

You can easily avoid all of this disappointment and crash weight gain, then crash weight loss horrible scenario if you just use your intelligence and don’t change things too much!!

Nothing wrong at all with eating warmer foods but there is absolutely NO reason to slam lots of salt in your cooking, you don’t need ANY as it happens!!! You don’t need to add corn flour, sugar or anything else thats guaranteed to make your health a lot worse over time. Whats wrong with keeping it all natural anyway?

It can be done and all people i look after do it this way.

If you thinbk thats no possible, then perhaps your taste buds are conditioned to junk food, and saturated fat and high sugar in particular!! If this is the case, then you need to change and make it right now!!!