Thursday 6th October

Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, died last night after a courageous battle with cancer, at the relatively young age of 56.

Jobs today has been called an innovator, a genius, a leader in the technology field, someone who created a legacy that will last generations, a true visionary, and just about everything in between.

Never has someone been regarded so high in the technology field, and his legacy will continue in just about everything we use today.

From ipod’s to ipad’s, to apple mac’s to his relationship with Microsoft some years ago when Microsoft actually kept the company going because Microsoft itself didn’t want the company to fold because it would have been broken up itself.

Jobs used to say in many of his speeches, “never let anyone else stop you following your dreams”, “never let negative people put you off you pursuing what you know what to be right”, he often encouraged entrepreneurs of all kinds to have a go at what they thought could work, what they thought the public wanted and what they thought deep down in their hearts to be true.

With your exercise programme and your food intake, you secretly know what is right and true.

You don’t need to read another diet in the paper that you know is faddy, you don’t need to fall for yet another faddy exercise machine, you don’t need to be put off by some of your negative friends who don’t even work out at all  yet are overweight, you don’t need to believe anyone who makes claims you know are too good to be true etc etc.

So whatever the situation you are in, focus on yourself and what you know to be right. There will be times when you feel like giving up on your workouts, on your food, on your alcohol levels, but actually following through every time you doubt yourself instead of giving up will take you a long, long way!!!

Steve Jobs RIP

March 22nd

Are you still believing the “low fat” myth on all your shopping trips to the supermarket?

Lets get some facts straight, not all low fat foods are good for you, are low in calories or not going to put body fat on you.

There are plenty of good low fat options such as lean mince when you are about to make spaghetti Bolognese, that can work very well for you. There is low fat milk which takes out the saturated fat in the milk, there is even lower fat versions of chicken for example, so these straight forward examples can work very well for you.

Lets get to the other “low fat” options though!

What about low fat yoghurts? Often these yoghurts are full of sugar and chemicals to give you the sweetened version, which internally is not very good for you. You would be far better off having natural yoghurt with some proper fruit cut up, along with some nuts, a far better choice and far better for your insides.

One of the biggest guilty parties on the low fat claim is cereal boxes. Frosties as we all knoow are coated with lashings of sugar, and not at the top of anyone’s list of healthy cereals, but are marketed as “low fat” so people buy them and think they are somehow going to get into shape by eating them, nothing could be further from the truth.

When you read a label of different foods, you can usually spot the way they get around it. If you look at the carbohydrate part, look underneath and it says “of which sugars” which is the really dangerous part. If a substantial part are of which sugars in terms of carbohydrate, then the food is usually loaded with sugar and WILL NOT help you lose the body fat you want, will only help put it on!!

There are also plenty of times when fat is good of course, such as in fish like salmon, mackerel and trout, this fat is not saturated fat which is the totally unhealthy version. These are good fats your body needs to function really well and are classed as essential.

Also, the fats found in nuts are highly valuable and should be used for snacks, cashews, brazils, hazelnuts and almonds are all great examples of fats that are extremely good for you. They will be flagged up as high fat but as long as you keep these in moderation, such as a small handful per serving, you will be doing your body a lot of good!