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Monday, 28th November

With more and more individuals getting diabetes, and other related diseases, isn’t it time we all paid more attention to the sugary foods that we consume every day, both knowingly and not.

By this i mean that there are many foods out there who seem healthy, but are in fact, mostly full of sugar.

Cereals are usually the biggest offenders.

When you were growing up, i was taught to think that muesli’s such as Alpen were the healthiest around. After all it contained nuts, oatmeal, dried fruit etc, surely it HAD to be good for us?

Back then the amount of sugar that was thrown on top of all these ingredients didnt seem to matter. It seemed okay to pile on different types of sugar in order to sweeten the product. These days you can have the no added sugar varieties and you can really taste the difference in these. These muesli’s STILL seem to taste more sugary than the likes of plain old fashioned porridge and weetabix, because they are exactly that-PLAIN all goodness foods that only contain what they say they contain, and nothing added.

The same can be said about shredded wheat, the more plain the breakfast, the better its going to be for you full stop!

The big problem becomes when you become USED to these higher sugar breakfasts, and more importantly your taste buds become used to sugary foods, meaning the thought and especially taste of plain foods becomes alm0st intolerable.

If your taste buds become used to sugary food and you cant do without them, then you are likely putting yourself in danger and if done for an extended period of time, will most likely up your chances of bringing on diabetes. Then you will be told by your doctor that you MUST get used to more plain, more natural foods to get good health back, and simply manage diabetes  and all its dangers.

The time is now to eat well and protect your body from all the dangers of foods loaded with refined sugars.

Twitt
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Thursday, 25th November

Are you keeping variety in your programme? You still need to keep to your core programme, but you need some extra activities to add to the spice of your life. If you just go to the gym, do you run outside too?

 Have you been cycling outside? Have you ever tried canoeing (its much harder than you think!)? Have you ever tried a trampoline? A lot of people i know find it fun! Have you ever wanted to learn how to swim? Whats wrong with signing up for a course for 10 weeks?

We talked about exercise being an every day habit for you, have you got to that stage yet or are you still fighting that concept? Good news is that if you stop fighting it, it WILL become an every day event that you actually enjoy as long as you have enough variation!

Have you had the goal of becoming a good runner? If this is true, start out walking every day and see how you feel after a couple of weeks.

Then you may be able to run ten yards in different intervals when you get your breath back. The worst thing you can do is start off running.

 I know people who bought the “run a marathon in 26 weeks” book and ended up with nasty blisters, bad feet, knees and back because they didnt listen to good advice. They followed the advice of running 5 times a week and it ended up in disaster! These books often don’t take into account everyday people and the problems they may run into.

You MUST try to find something you like, otherwise you are very unlikely to keep it up.

Another great tactic would be to team up with a friend in your fitness, as long as you have similar goals and are of similar fitness levels. The social aspect alone will motivate you along very well and take you to levels of training you may not have thought possible.

Bottom line is simply to DO instead of talking about it so lets give it your best shot!

Twitt
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Thursday, 24th November

All options are possible if you apply yourself to a goal that’s uppermost in your mind.

What stops us getting there is being sidetracked into minor things that have no bearing on what we are trying to achieve.

This week as I have said yesterday, has seen me focus on getting every single person I train up to their best levels for the year. This has led to exciting training sessions and previously unseen motivation levels.

There are so many things that can detract us from our goals, this is why its vital to have a structure in our lives we can do without even thinking about it.

I had to visit the dentist today with a minor complaint, but still enough pain to cause me some distress. We then get lectured (rightly I might add!) on how to clean our teeth properly, twice a day to enable us to have our teeth for a lifetime. Im sure most if not all of you have experienced this.

So why do we brush our teeth every day, twice a day, some people more, and we cant look after the rest of our bodies every day?

If we don’t look after our teeth, they eventually fall out!

If we don’t look after our body and continually abuse it, we are likely to have a heart attack or bring on a serious disease.

So by that comparison, most of the population doesn’t treat their body with the respect it deserves, until its too late usually when you are being lectured by a doctor in hospital!

So if you are doubting whether to continue your exercise programme, and somehow questioning the virtues of eating healthy food daily, then surely this must be the wake up call you need?

The primary need to exercise and eat right is to be healthy, to function properly in daily life, for your immune system to be strong to fight off disease, and to live a decent quality of life.

Surely these most basic reasons are enough to get you back on track and get you exercising today!!!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 22nd November

A massive amount of colds, flu you name it, its around in a big way at the moment, and a huge amount of people have got some illness one way or another!

This is the first big wave of illness to hit us this winter, and undoubtedly, not the last. Some people have already had it for a couple of weeks, some people havent been out of the house at all.

We usually talk about how being fit makes us look better and lose body fat and weight, but its exactly at times like this that we need to talk about the importance of a health and fitness programme for our immune system.

Without a healthy immune system, our bodies would break down and make us vulnerable to the biggest and most threatening illnesses. This is why hospitals have become much more responible for cleanliness and not passing germs/viruses on, because when you are ill in hospital, your immune system is down and you are highly vulnerable to infection, which has even killed some patients in the past of course unfortunately.

So if you are one of those who are ill or have been ill lately, being healthy and feeling just “normal” again would be an achievement! Weight loss and fat loss may not be on your priority list right now, and getting your immune system back up to speed is the most important thing you can do right now!

I bang on about fresh, natural healthy foods where possible, and these happen to be the most important foods when it comes to boosting your immune system. These are often called “superfoods” and they are becoming more and more appreciated, and you can usually read about them at least once a week in the national newspapers.

These foods will form the foundation not only for your immune system and how healthy you feel, but for your entire future success, they are that important!!!

Twitt
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Friday, 18th November

Finishing off the week in style is always a good feeling, and if you have started to adopt some of the habits i suggest, then you should be improving quite a lot by now.

Its usually this session, the last one of the week, that usually defines the way we feel about ourselves going into the weekend. If we have a big productive session on a friday, we usually feel good about ourselves and end up on a big high.

Like a football match, we feel we are only as good as our last session!! If we have been consistent for weeks and months, our last session is likely to be first class unless we have felt ill or something that hinders our performance.

I feel exactly the same way when i’m giving out the session and instructing it.

If i don’t give value for money, and i don’t produce quality sessions, then i would be out of business straight away. Unfortunately, in the fitness industry there are a lot people who rely on marketing and telling you in the media how “good they are and how they can change your life”. Some people do believe them but are often let down when they find out there is little substance to their claims. These people often then go to another job or industry peddling their outlandish and false claims!

I always laugh at the charlatans who claim they train so called famous people. I remember jenifer lopez’s trainer telling all the world’s media how he “created her famous bum”, WHAT RUBBISH AND PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to create that shape without her genetics!

Then 6 months later there was another trainer claiming the success, and last year i saw yet another trainer trying to claim the same success! The facts are that these trainers only usually work with these people a couple of months, and these people or so called celebrities and go off to do their own thing. You cannot sustain a business on such short term ventures.

I try to value my everyday people who have given back a lot to me emotionally and physically for many, many years, and any trainer who has been in the game with a sustainable clientele for many, many years will tell you the same thing! If i mentioned so called famous people i trained or other media/TV ventures, i would consider myself detracting from my every day, every week, every year, every ten years individuals i have been training, some have been training for over 15 years straight now which is all credit to them!

So back to your training, judge yourself by your last session or week’s training. Unless you have been ill, this shows exactly where you are RIGHT now and what you need to do to improve from here. There has never been a more important workout than today so lets get out there and really give it your best. I feel exactly the same because i will be giving out many before the weekend starts and i want to make them of huge quality!!!!

Twitt