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Thursday, 1st December

A great chance meeting this morning with a gentleman Roger Rees, a 65 year old pensioner who has always like a pint (or three!), liked a smoke every day and thought exercising should be banished from society. He always believed that somehow things would “turn out okay” in health terms.

Then after being diagnosed with blood pressure problems, he was prescribed blood pressure tablets for which he stayed on for a couple of years.

Then he decided to exercise!!! It was sort of a “light bulb” moment and he discovered the massive benefits of exercises.

He has taken to exercise like a duck to water, although he has stuck to cycling as his first love.

Since he bought a bike, he has had the best 12 months of his life he says!

His blood pressure tablets have gradually come down, and with the doctor’s approval, has literally just been signed off medication as his progress has been so remarkable.

He had a big weakness for bacon, he now says he cant remember the last time he had it.

He drunk a few times a week. Now he has a couple of pints once a week, and he says he enjoys it this way far better, and doesn’t wake up with a hangover anymore!!!

His smoking is a bad memory from a distant past he says. He says it was the worst thing he ever did, but since he is now smoke free, his lung capacity is far more impressive which has been backed up by all the tests hes been having with the doctor.

The bottom line is that hes changed his life completely with exercise and eating well.

 Hes lighter than hes ever been. Hes far more energetic than I have EVER seen him and all of this shows exactly what can be achieved by a healthy lifestyle change!!!!

Twitt
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Wednesday, 30th November

The end of the month and a time for celebration or throwing your chips in and calling it quits for christmas?!!!!!

Depends on your current level of fitness and conditioning i suppose!

If you are in good shape, you will raring to go in december and really make further inroads into your body fat and strength levels, i certainly see a lot of people in this situation.

If you are struggling to get workouts in and shop well for good food, then chances are you will be glad to see christmas coming, so that you make a “new year resolution” and lose all the weight after christmas!!!

This is following typical behaviour by most of the population.

I always tell people that december is one of the most important months to train hard and eat relatively well. Of course, you will be having lunches out, evenings out when healthy food may not be on top of the list, and you will be drinking alcohol a lot more too.

Despite all of this, the exercise and effort you put into it will be worth heck of a lot to you.

If you want a wheezy chest, then don’t exercise.

If you want to lower your immune system, then don’t exercise.

If you want your clothes to feel much tighter, then don’t exercise!

If you want to stagger into christmas and face a herculean challenge in the new year again, then don’t exercise!!!

So in december, everyone knows you may well drink more than you should, you will almost certainly eat much more than you should, and your sleep may well be lousy, but despite all of this, commit yourself to exercising throughout the month. This is the greatest christmas gift you can give to yourself, you are nothing if you haven’t got good health so lets keep this uppermost in your mind please!!

Twitt
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Tuesday, November 29th

The tragic loss of Gary Speed has had everyone scratching their head and numb with shock.

Whatever happened, nothing will really make up for his family’s loss and football’s loss in general.

People have started to speculate on the reasons for it all but the simple fact is that nobody knows for sure.

Depression has been one train of thought, the other he was being blackmailed by the newspapers to all sorts of wild rumours and accusations.

Depression is a very common problem in society and is often known as the silent killer. There was a german goalkeeper dead a couple of years ago after experiencing clinical depression, yet nobody knew. They call it “the curse of the strong” because you have to be mentally strong to hide it from everyone when you think about it!!!

Depression can start as something small and build up to something that literally takes over your life.

What can you do? The first thing i think is to consult your doctor to put you in touch with a professional in the field, you are not going mad, you shouldnt be ashamed, its just a fact of life with many, many people and needs help as soon as possible.

Exercise can be a great help for the individuals i have dealt with who have experienced these issues.

Exercise will automatically raise your spirits by releasing endorphins (a feel good hormone) in your body. If done every or most days, exercise will have a hugely positive effect in battles with every disease and ailments. Depression is a hugely complex problem that is multi-layered, and im not pretending to be an expert.

But, i do know that eating well and healthy, avoiding alcohol (a depressant) and working out in fresh air have long been proven to have very powerful effect against depression.

Its always better to do something about it than ignore any problem, whatever your situation, these three things will work for you no matter where you are right now!!!

Twitt
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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, 17th November

So we have talked about how to feed your body to maximise muscle gains for the young rugby player, we have talked about how to employ the most successful training strategies from beginner to a more developed athlete.

We talked about why we do all of these things.

Then it comes to a big factor that we haven’t mentioned yet-WATER.

Most people don’t realise that water is far more important than food.

For example, you can usually last 5-8 days before you die without water.

You can lost without food for approximately 7-8 weeks as hunger strikers have proven, with often fatal results.

Another huge fact for you is that if you DON’T drink enough water throughout the day, your performance is likely to be down 33% or even as low as 40%!!

Not only your training and game day performance but your concentration too. They have done numerous studies on schoolkids when they supplied one lots of kids in a school environment water for 3 months and im talking regularly every day. The most startling part was that their educational tests result success went up an incredible 100%, and their concentration levels were proven to be 40% up!!!

So the bottom line is that you eat well all day, you can sleep well and you can train hard, but if you’re NOT drinking enough water, your performance levels and ultimately your results are likely to be down between 33% and 40%, which is an incredible figure.

If you drink water regularly too, you will burn off more body fat than if you don’t, this has been scientifically proven too.

So if you are looking to become a better athlete, as well as a better student, water should be a big part of your every day life!!

Twitt