Monday, 22nd April

If you stop eating your favourite food completely, and I mean you never plan on eating it ever again, this is a perfect recipe to binge and go off the rails big time.

The best way to get around this is to still eat these foods that may be very high in fat or sugar or both, but eat them in much smaller portions. For example, if you had a habit of eating a whole pizza on a Saturday, and maybe a
Tuesday, then you were probably eating at least 1000 calories in one go, a ton of saturated fat and refined sugars.

If you keep it to one slice at a time only, thin and crispy to lower calories, and eat it slowly to savour the taste more, then this is perfectly acceptable once or twice a week. The main thing you would be doing though is consuming a fraction of your normal amount on a Saturday and Tuesday.

This alone will have the effect of you not seeming like being on a diet. Your saturated fat and sugar will drop dramatically. Your ability to eat a lot in one go (bingeing) will diminish greatly, and your behavior towards food will likely change permanently.

Once your brain realizes that its not on a diet, you will automatically relax and you will develop a far more healthy attitude to food, and be far more comfortable knowing that although you have to eat around 80% good healthy food, you will still be able to have one or two treats a week such as the pizza in this case.

After studying people’s habits for years, I have seen this situation many times turn out that the individual involved eventually goes off treats such as the pizza because they KNOW they can have it! Its when you know you cannot have something that usually makes it far more appealing!!

Try it out and see how you get on.

Friday, 19th April

How to get your eating right

Write down what you eat and when/why you eat it, or what your drink and why you eat it. If you do this you can really see what you’re eating and drinking, how much more than you may need and what stresses are causing you do it. Once you know where you are, then you will know how not to get into situations in the future that destroy your progress.

Accurate food records for 3 days are the quickest way to fix your eating. If you are stressed, hungry or bored, there will be issues when you make food choices. Write down how long you are training for too because you will need more food on those days, and you cannot train on fresh air alone.

Are you skipping breakfast, nibbling on rubbish all day, overeating in the evening and late at night because you are so hungry you have to eat much bigger amounts of food than normal?

Do you entertain yourself with food when you are bored? Perhaps you reward yourself with chocolate when you’re stressed?

You may need to watch your moods when you eat, most people will feel better when they eat a tub of ice cream initially, but it does nothing for anxiety and stress you may be experiencing in your life. The problems that made you stressed in the first place are never really solved by the ice cream, and you just added a new one of piling on body fat if you do this regularly! You need to avoid this vicious circle.

If you eat food on a regular basis OTHER than giving you energy and health, then you need to recognize that food should be seen as fuel and not as an emotional crutch to get you through some stressful times.

Food becomes dangerous in terms of weight gain and in terms of worsening your internal health when it is eaten for entertainment, reducing stress or just making you feel more comfortable.

It’s a fact that no amount of food solves any problems.

For example, if you eat lightly during the day, and eat excessively at night like a lot of people I start with do, then try and change it right away by having a bigger breakfast, a decent lunch and lighter evening meal, with mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks. This way of eating will give you far more energy, keep you feeling fuller for longer, make you less prone to have sugary/fatty snacks and transform your body every single week. This is the way your become far more efficient in the way you create energy for yourself, burn fat, and create lean muscle which in turn boosts your metabolism greatly.

You won’t feel like eating late, and you’re going to be far more in control of everything so give it a go for better results.

Any problems tel 07968 980808

Or www.kerimckibbin.co.uk

Thursday, 11th April

Moving on with the hip and back problems, there is plenty for you to do when it comes to staying and becoming more active, which is the long term answer to having good back and hip health.

Most back problems in particular are down to too much weight around the trunk area, so you can see how important eating healthily, keeping your weight under control is and staying active are when it comes to living a pain free life.

Non-weight bearing activities are the key, running for instance is your worst choice available although it can have good weight loss results. The downside risks with running with a bad back are monumental, so this is why I firmly DO NOT recommend running if you have any of these problems.

Walking is kinder on the joints, but as I said yesterday, try and make sure your trainers are never more than 6 months old, and you change them regularly. Also, don’t be tempted to wear your OLD trainers either! If you do, even for silly little things like working in the garden, doing little jobs around the hourse, they WILL cause a problem for your back and hips even on these odd occasions. They need to go straight in the bin!

Swimming can be good, but avoid breaststroke, many good physios recommend you avoid this particular stroke because it works against the body’s natural motion, and can put strain on your back and shoulders, and hips for that matter.

Weight training is recommended with only lighter weights and strict form, using benches for support when possible for your back. This will strengthen your back as long as the exercises are sensible, obviously power moves and big heavy lifts would do more harm than good so please avoid. I would try a whole body programme of around 6-8 exercises for 3 sets of 8 repetitions, this would be done twice a week with a three day gap in between.

You can see that there are many options, and staying active is key but the effort must go in on your food too, or you wont get the results you need to relieve the pain for good.

Friday, 5th April

The role of speed and agility should not be limited to the “young and sporty”.

How many of you went to school, took part in sports to some degree, then may have even gone on to play for the school team, maybe a proper club team and maybe for a number of years……………….then everything stops!!!

You may have a couple of years off, sometimes a number of years off, and when you try to get back into exercise, the agility and speed you once had in school for example has disappeared!

You feel stiff as a board and you always put it down to “old age”, even though you may only be in your 30’s or 40’s!!! Hardly old age in my book!!

The great news is that there’s many ways around this but you do have to start slowly.

Getting a more general programme that concentrates on making your core stronger is the way to start, getting your muscles more flexible and allowing them to strengthen. You need to stick at this for a couple of months until your body recognizes that its ready to improve again, and you suddenly start realizing that you are not really “too old” at all, that you can feel better, that your clothes start to feel looser and that you can show improvements in your training, and incremental improvements start becoming a normal way of life for you.

Its at this stage you can think about doing more speed and agility work.

Fast footwork sessions are suddenly an option, backward running can be done, light sprint work is back on the agenda, and a whole host of techniques I love to take people through.

Once you get through this work, automatically you will start to remember the way you were in school or in your sports team, you will be a lot more agile, much faster and literally a big spring in your step!

This is what a much more complete programme is all about, and this is why I so feel that amazing results are always consistently possible.

Tuesday, 2nd April

So here we are, Easter has come and gone, lots of you have been on mini-trips, and been enjoying yourself over the holiday, and why not!!

Easter signifies for me how much work you have really put in over the winter? Have you been working hard when it was freezing and wet, as well as when it was dark at 4pm?!!! This is when it really counted and the annual expectation that some have got to look great in one month is often a foolish one.

This is why i write this thing year round, because EVERY single week is important, every monday to friday in terms of training and eating is ultra-important to shape your destiny this year. Ideally, you would have taken some of that stuff in i was writing every day, and applied it to get some decent results. I know that is clearly the case with a lot of you.

If you have ignored what i said in all of those winter months, and indeed the last four years, then no need to worry, i will certainly not be offended and will gladly continue to try and help you.

If today is indeed your first day of trying to get into shape for the summer, than i welcome you onboard!

The first thing you need to look at is your food cupboards, and are they full of sugary and fatty foods, or are they full of good wholesome foods. If they dont come up to scratch, then please plan ahead and make your next supermarket shop your first start, filling that trolley will foods as natural as possible, without all the added sugar, salt and saturated fat, start drinking more water and start moving, and by that i mean exercising, however small in duration terms.

The fact that you started is the most important thing you can do today, and you can still make a difference to yourself by the summer, if you knuckle down right now!!!