Friday, 1st February

Cereals and breakfasts in general can be a difficult subject for most, ranging from people who miss breakfasts to those who fall for the cereals to the masses that often come in pretty boxes.

Let’s get the first one out of the way, if you miss breakfast you WILL NOT BE successful in your fat loss and performance targets FULL STOP!

If you think that by missing breakfast, you will lose weight because you’re not eating any food, then that’s totally wrong. You need to eat breakfast to get your metabolism going, the rate at which your body burns calories 24 hours a day. If you miss breakfast, you are giving your metabolism every reason NOT to get going, every reason TO hold on to body fat stores, and you’re creating no incentive for your bodily functions to get going in a normal and healthy way.

Missing breakfast is the VERY worst start to your day.

Then when you go down the supermarket aisles and come to the breakfast choices, you are often faced with seemingly hundreds of cereal boxes! They hve catchy names, some have actually the words “fitness” or playson that word in the title!!

It’s a shame then that this particular one and all of the ones with catchy names or have cool characters on the front, are the ones that are loaded wth sugar and often salt. At least 80% of the cereals on offer are exactly the sugary options you do not want to take up for breakfast.

The ones you want to take notice of and buy are still the all natural ones, the weetabix, the shredded wheat, porridge in particular is wonderful, and free range eggs are fine products too, full of goodness, full of nutrients and full of energy.

Wholemeal toast is fine, just avoid the spread and try chopping a banana and using that as a spread.

You get some people who say do not eat bread, but most people are unlikely to be off it longer term. The trick is to be sensible and have a couple of slices a day, avoid the butter and margarine and eating bread in moderation will be fine.

Eating right matters so keep up the good efforts!!

Tuesday, 29th January

According to the media today, the average length of a diet and exercise programme after christmas is now down to just one month!!!

This is sad statistic and everyone should be alarmed about it.

Reasons for quitting an exercise programme include losing interest in what they were doing, too cold to train, too wet to train and a general feeling it was a waste of time.

To me, i can actually sympathise with people who feel like this, because the exercise part is presented by most establishments IS BORING!!!

To me, if you are a big gym and presenting a programme, how do you expect your members to enjoy something that the other 3000 members are doing (apparently it takes 3000 members for these gyms to break even after taking into account rent, equipment etc!). General, boring, re-hashing of the same rubbish DOES NOT WORK and is not EXCITING for pretty much anyone with a brain!!! This is why most if not all of the big gyms (you can read the business pages in any newspaper every day to see how badly they are doing), DO NOT retain most of their members.

This is why you see their adverts outside or inside supermarkets all the time, 18 year olds selling you direct debits outside shops with no interest if you improve or not, all they want is your money.

So this is why according to the media today, peope lose interest and are about to quit or will quit by thursday at the latest.

The same goes for diet clubs, channel 4 did a big expose on weight watchers last night, and there is great alarm at the amount people spend on the diets over the years! Glad to see the authorities are finally catching up with these people who have cheated people out of their hard earned money over the years!!

My mission is to help people out, put them on the right path and retain individuals for years, and not just month on a contract you cannot get out of!!! You retain people by getting constant results, and this is what we should all strive for by making innovative and inventive programmes for everybody!!!

Tuesday, 22nd January

With a bit of luck, you have got through your big workout yesterday to set the tone for the week, and maybe you are thinking how you can replicate that impressive start to the week.

Variety then should be your number one way to keep your standards high, your workouts fresh and therefore your progress high too!!!

This is why your workouts apart from weight training and the usual cardio should incorporate so much more!!!

If you have read this thing for a while, then you will know only too well that i love medicine ball work, bosu ball exercises, swiss ball work, and boxing workouts.

These exercises will work your body in a different way and often reach the hard to get areas that traditional exercise doesn’t seem to get near!!!

All of these different forms of exercise tend to hammer your core much more deeply than a more traditional workout. They are so successful that i consider these forms of training as my “traditional” form workout!!!

Once you have your traditional form of training change, then its at this point when exercising becomes “exciting again”, which is down to the variety AND effectiveness of your training, which in turn produces the big results that we are all after!!!

The best way to incorporate these types of training is to package various exercises into groups of 3.

For example, you could do medicine ball press ups, with alternate squat thrusts, and then finish it off with rope work we like to do at the gym all the time. Let me straight away that the group of three just mentioned may well be the hardest combination you could pick.

Of course, exercise selection depends entirely on your fitness ability and what you can handle.

It’s always better to start off cautiously and we will be discussing much more of this tomorrow!!!

Monday, 21st January

Assuming you are still building your programme up, one big thing you should be making sure of is the importace of a big workout on a monday to start off your week in the right way!!!

You may have had a workout before breakfast, lunch time or you hit your workout at tea time, whatever that time may be, you need to make sure you hit it with intensity, aiming to do a little bit better than last week, and setting yourself up for a very strong week.

When you do train hard, you will be more inspired to eat well and less likely to make poor choices.

When you train hard, you won’t want to waste any of that effort you have just put in.

This is why monday is SO important. How many times have you had a bad monday in terms of missing a workout, and then you went on to have a poor week in general? You may think that because you missed monday’s workout, then it will not be so bad to miss tuesday too, and by the time wednesday comes along, you may as well wait until next week!!!

Missing a week of training usually goes with softening up on your diet too. The attitude of “putting everything off until next week” is very common, and i hear anecdotal evidence of this all the time.

Being in shape is all about creating good momentum, getting into shape in the first place is very much about getting that momentum going strongly, and the only way you get momentum is getting a succession of good workouts together along with feeding yourself in a highly nutritious way.

The great news is that once this momentum does get going, it can be very hard to stop and results at this stage are much easier to get, almost without even thinking about it!!!

Friday, 18th January

Had to take the morning off today, most people in wales are affected this morning, and i don’t really fancy doing damage to the car as i did in heavy snow a couple of years ago, or spinning up and down hills!!!

Anyway, the options for workouts today may seem limited to you, but theres a lot more than you think.

Walking in the snow (when it stops) is very tough and can give you a great workout! Your legs will be working overtime to say the least, and you will be very glad you took time out of the house to get some fresh air, especially when you are likely to be spending more time in the house over the next couple of days!!!

The house option is always viable with a typical inside workout.

Think a simple group of 5-6 exercises.

Press ups

Arm dips

Plank

Sitting up and down on chair

Alternate squat thrusts

Do your best on these exercises for a total of 3 times. This will make a big difference and give you a top quality inside workout!

Another good reason to train is to straighten out your eating.

I have found time after time that people never eat as well if they are stuck in the house all day, AND when they don’t exercise!

You have these two potentially weight gain situations happening today, so a workout of any sort should be very welcome in your day!!

We hav zero or sub-zero temperatures the next two days, so the same principles will apply, if you want to stay in shape that is!!!

Some people love the snow, and there’s no reason to let it destroy your workouts and good eating though!!