Outdoor Training

With the warmer weather finally here, it might be time to take your training outdoors. It’s not just for runners and cyclists, gym-goers can take training outside too.

There are many benefits to training outdoors:
- The fresh air is much nicer than the sweaty, air-conditioned gym air. 

- Sunshine (which has a whole host of health benefits and is something many people, especially in this country, don’t get enough of).
- Grounding/Earthing – getting your bare skin in contact with the earth has also been shown to have many health benefits.
- You can use different exercises to what you’re used to doing in the gym since you have more space and are away from machines. A great opportunity to mix up your training for a while.

Whilst there may not be any of the machines you’re used to using outdoors, and while you may still need to use the gym for some heavier resistance-based sessions, you can get a lot done with just your bodyweight and your surroundings.

Bodyweight exercises are great for both building strength and working on your conditioning – push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, burpees and many more are all great options that are always beneficial to work on. 

Mastering these basic bodyweight movements will always be complimentary to other weight training and general movement health.

The open space is a great chance to work on some sprints – something that too few people utilise, and that aren’t quite the same on a treadmill! (A word of caution though – build yourself up to these and always remember your limits. And warm-up very well first!)

Speed and agility work (with cones, speed ladders, hurdles etc.) is also great for athletic performance as well as general co-ordination. Practicing acceleration, deceleration, change of direction and foot speed is another great way to change up your training and reap the rewards.

Tied in with this you have lower intensity exercises such as yoga and stretching – which would be great to do outdoors in a peaceful setting.

Not forgetting the more traditional outdoor activities mentioned before like walking, running and cycling – these are always more enjoyable outside in the real world than in the gym on treadmills and stationary bikes.

Then you have outdoor classes like Bootcamps…

Here you can do many of the above-mentioned exercises and more. Some of these classes will have more equipment than just bodyweight and park benches, and you can really make the most of the combination of the space to train and all the options that brings, with the resistance work offered by the equipment.

They’re also likely to have different equipment to what you’ll find in most gyms or different ways to use it.
Tyres, kettlebells, sleds, medicine balls, battling ropes, sledgehammers and more are often used to great effect in outdoor sessions.

The main point I’m trying to get across here, is to make the most of the good weather! You’re not limited to just training inside and the fresh air and sunshine will provide as much, or maybe even more benefit than the exercise itself.

Find some green space – local parks and fields, your garden, the beach… and just move!

www.MarkOneFitness.co.uk

7 Top Tips to stay healthy in December

In December many of us tend to let our guard down with regard to our health and fitness regimes (if we have one in place to begin with). We’re busy with “busy work” and our exercise efforts can quite easily take a back seat to shopping, lunches and dinners, hangovers, kids and more.

It’s important to make time to fit your exercise in, even if you have to shorten your workouts or train at home. Skipping workouts leads to skipping more workouts and then, like the classic diet, the “I’ll start again on Monday” promise that translates to a complete blowout.

There’s no denying that at this time of year we have extra work to do – busy times at work or deadlines to meet; yes, the shopping does need to be done; and yes, there are lots of social things going on – but if you don’t take time for yourself you’ll be left in January feeling beaten and depressed and looking at what seems like a huge challenge ahead to lose weight and get fit again.

So here are some tips you may find useful through December to try and keep on top of things.

Remember, at this time of year if you struggle to maintain your exercise and healthy eating, your focus should just be on maintaining your current weight, not on losing weight. As long as you’re not gaining weight you’re doing better than most, and also probably better than previous years!

Tip #1: Make time. It’s not as hard as it sounds, just schedule in your workouts and stick to it – things will crop up and get in the way, but you need to keep to your schedule for yourself. Other things can wait, because in the end, your health is more important and one missed workout can snowball. Find a time that you think you’ll be able to allocate to a workout and schedule it in.

If you have the time to train in the morning – do it then. If not, train as soon as you get home from work (maybe even change into your gym kit before you leave). The longer you leave it, the more likely you are to skip it.

Tip #2: Pace yourself. Just because you’re on a night out, doesn’t mean you have to guzzle your way through 3 bottles of prosecco or a dozen pints. Enjoy your drinks, don’t neck them. And avoid shots!
As an extra bonus you might avoid the end-of-night junk food binge too!

Tip #3: Don’t take cakes, sweets, chocolates etc. into work. Chances are most of your co-workers will be trying to avoid the Christmas weight-gain too so stick together and be strong! If someone offers you treats, try to politely decline as much as possible. If you receive a box of chocolates as a gift, don’t open them, or gift them on (preferably to someone who’s not watching their weight).

Tip #4: Catch up on lost sleep. The late nights associated with all the get-togethers will have an impact on your health. Sleep is your best tool for keeping off the pounds. You’ll feel better and have more energy (= less skipped workouts), you burn the most fat (proportionally) when you sleep, your body recovers and repairs and your hormones rebalance. If you miss sleep, be sure to catch up on it somewhere – try to avoid shifting your wake up time too much, just take a nap in the afternoon when possible to make up for a late night or get to bed earlier the following night.

Tip #5: Walk more. To make up for the extra calories you’re likely consuming, and possibly (but hopefully not) missed workouts, try to get more activity during the day. Park at the back of the car park. Walk instead of taking the bus. Climb the escalators instead of waiting to be delivered at the top etc. Little things that you do daily add up. 

That being said, walking isn’t the most efficient activity for weight loss, so don’t sacrifice a workout for a walk, but if you can add walking in where it wasn’t before without cutting into your day, do it.

Tip #6: Drink lots of water. A glass of water when you wake up (before your tea/coffee) will help you rehydrate; a glass before meals will help you to eat less; a glass or two on a night out will slow down your alcohol consumption; water during the day will help you focus and may help reduce snacking; there are no down-sides to staying hydrated and many upsides, so it’s a no-brainer really.

Tip #7: Use your diary. This is similar to tip #1, but we tend to find ourselves wasting a lot of time all through the year, especially at Christmas. Plan your days and make them efficient. You’ll be amazed how much you can get done when you have a clear plan rather than just winging-it. Plan your day the night before – write your to-do’s, allocate time for meals and workouts, get the small things ticked off quickly and be sure to make time for yourself too. Things will get in the way, but just stick to plan and deal with extra things as soon as they come up.

Obviously there are many more things you can do to stay on track, but scheduling your days will likely have the biggest impact.

If you’ve been prepared and done all of your Christmas shopping already then you have one less thing to worry about – work on your plan of action for the nights out and think about when you’re going to have your workouts, and making better choices when the temptations are abundant.

When January comes you’ll be ready to hit the New Year running and focus on your health and weight loss goals without having to undo all the damage done in December.

If you need help with your training and/or nutrition, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on Nutrition Coaching, Personal Training, Bootcamp, and other classes.

Cardio or Weights for Fat Loss?

Are you wasting your time on the treadmill?

For the most part fat loss is about energy expenditure. Calories are units of energy, fat is made up of stored energy, ergo to burn fat you must use up energy.

I’m going to tell you how you can burn more energy, without spending precious extra time in the gym.

Your muscles are the engines of your fat burning. The harder they work, the more energy [calories] you’ll burn.

Whilst running on a treadmill/outside, cycling, or jumping on the cross-trainer for 40 minutes will burn energy and improve your aerobic fitness, it’s not going to work your muscles particularly hard, especially after a few weeks of doing it when your body becomes accustomed to the workout and more efficient at it (more efficient = less calories burned).

For the most part, the sheer amount of time people spend running is what produces any fat loss results, but also normally comes with a loss of muscle too (picture a typical long-distance runner – not the most muscular people).

If your goal is fat loss, without the accompanying loss of muscle and strength (remember you want to keep hold of your muscle to burn more calories, and I see no reason why anyone would want to get weaker!) then resistance training is your best choice.

Already I can hear the usual response (normally from women): “But I don’t want to get muscly”

You won’t.

Let me explain.

To burn fat, you need to be burning more calories than you consume – should be quite obvious.

To build muscle, you need to be consuming more calories than you burn (you can’t build muscle without adequate fuel – it would be like trying to build a wall without any bricks).

So while there are some slight differences between training protocols, training for fat loss and training for muscle gain are very similar. The difference comes from your nutrition.

By lifting weights (resistance training) you will be burning more of the fuel in your muscles. This fuel then needs replacing, which will come from your food, or if you’re burning more than you’re eating, from your energy (fat) stores.

Enter the next problem: Gyms full of machines.

Machines made to target specific muscles are great for rehabbing an injury or for targeting problem areas for body-building, but for the weight-loss community, they’re using too few muscles to burn any significant amount of energy; and if you spend your hour in the gym going from one machine to the next with your “3 sets of 10” programme, you’re missing out on A LOT of calorie burning.

There’s a reason that squats, deadlifts, lunges, burpees etc. are hated world-wide – because they’re hard work! Hard work means they’re using most of your muscles at the same time, draining your energy (burning it) and getting you out of breath (muscles need oxygen to burn fuel – so the more out of breath from lifting weights you are, the more energy you’re likely burning [as a side note – this also counts as “cardio”]).

THIS is how you should be allocating your gym time. Focussing on large movements with resistance.

Remember, if you’re eating less calories than you burn, you won’t be able to build lots of muscle! For women, you also don’t have the right hormones to build muscle easily, especially without eating enough.

Some people will notice an ‘apparent’ increase in muscle size to begin with. If you’re not used to lifting weights, your muscles will draw in more fluid (water/blood) in order to repair, and they’ll also become more efficient at storing energy (which is a good thing because it’s easier to burn it from here, and it means less will be stored as fat if more can be stored in the muscle).

This is not your muscles growing, just becoming more efficient; and it will not continue unless you are over-eating – don’t panic about your jeans getting a little bit tighter around your thighs initially.

Fat-burning is much, MUCH faster than muscle-building so this will be a non-issue very soon.

Another point to remember is that bodybuilding requires the muscles to grow in size. This means striving for the famed “pump” in the muscle. This shouldn’t really be an issue if you’re using large, full-body movements instead of isolating small muscle groups, but if you’re worried about this, avoid lifting light weights for high reps – a sure-fire way to get a pump in the muscle and a common mistake women make when lifting weights, as people generally believe that this is better for “toning”!

This is a classic trap that women lifting weights fall into – too scared to get big and muscly, so they lift light weights.

If you want a leaner, more toned, firmer look, you need to make your muscles firmer and more toned. 

To do this you need to put tension through your muscles with heavier weights.

“Toning” requires heavy weights, not light weights and high reps.

Please be aware though that as with any training there is risk involved and by “heavy” I mean the heaviest weight you can lift with good technique. If you’re unsure of technique, get a good trainer and make sure your focus is on technique, not going for PB’s (personal best’s) every session.

*Until your technique is near perfect, you should NEVER increase the weight you’re lifting!*

In summary:

● For fat burning you need to lift weights (even just bodyweight exercises are sufficient) as oppose to spending countless hours doing “cardio”.

● Choose large, full body exercises over small isolated ones.

● Technique comes first and foremost, only then can you add more weight.

● As long as you’re burning more fuel than you’re consuming (calories), you CANNOT build masses of muscle, just a small adaptation to begin with as the muscles adjust to the extra work.

● More sets, less reps, heavier weights (with good technique) are preferable.

● Eat a healthy diet full of nutritious foods and avoid over-eating, but don’t drop calories too low; as long as calorie intake is less than expenditure you’ll lose weight, but if you drop calories too low your calorie expenditure will drop to match it and weight loss will stop.

For guys (or girls) wanting to burn fat AND build muscle this becomes quite complicated. Without a good coach I would recommend you focus on just fat burning first – if you’re doing strength training you’re unlikely to lose too much muscle so focus on getting leaner. Then, when you have lost an adequate amount of body fat, change to a muscle building routine (it’s easier to build muscle when you’re leaner as testosterone/oestrogen balance is more favourable for this with lower body fat).

For help with your training and/or nutrition, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on Nutrition Coaching, Personal Training, Bootcamp, and other classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Improving your eating and health without “Dieting”

For most people “Diets” are too difficult. The healthy recipe book or diet plan is great for about a week, then compliance drops off and the excitement of trying something new wears off because you haven’t lost 10 lbs in a week.

Gradually the “Diet” goes out the window and old eating habits creep back in.

For some people, the traditional method of following a strict diet for a few weeks, or the points systems or calorie-counting that have been relied on for so long do work, but for most, they don’t quite get the results you’re after.

Enter Habit Based Nutrition.

The reason people fail at dieting is because their new actions go against ingrained habits. It’s your behaviour and habits that need to be addressed rather than a strict plan telling you what you can or can’t eat.

You don’t need to be told what you can or can’t eat as this is the failing point in most diets, and most people know what they should and shouldn’t be eating. You need to be able to enjoy the foods you like, but still eat in a way that works for your body and delivers the results you want.

By addressing your daily habits, you can make small, healthy changes easily; gradually improving your diet over time so it changes for good, not until “the end of your diet”. Every couple of weeks you should introduce a new habit that you can scale up or down to suit your current level – if it’s too hard, make it easier. If it’s too easy, make it more challenging.

By introducing one achievable habit at a time, you’ll build up step by step to a healthier lifestyle.

Progress should be tracked in a number of ways, not just with weight on the scales (which is useful, but not ideal); photos, measurements, compliance and any other specific markers you feel will be helpful are essential in keeping you motivated.

DAILY reminders will help you stay on track; and learning why you’re doing what you’re doing will help you understand and commit to your habit changes more easily. 

Remembering why you’re making the changes (what your goals are) will also keep you motivated.

One of the main reasons slimming clubs work is because you’re making yourself accountable. Tell someone what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and ask for their support (it doesn’t have to be a facebook announcement to the world, but someone you trust who will hold you accountable and give you a hard time if you slack off – like a trainer or coach). 

The aim is not to embarrass you when you fail, but to motivate you to try harder and boost your pride and confidence when you succeed.

Now you can do all of this yourself, but there’s so much nutritional “information” out there that it can be difficult to work out what you need to do next, or even where to begin!

As a Precision Nutrition certified coach, I can now offer you access to ProCoach, a habit-based nutrition coaching program that will help you to easily integrate healthy eating into your lifestyle.

It covers all of the above – teaching you new habits in a structured way to ensure you start at the beginning and build up slowly, one success after the other. While there’s no right or wrong way, certain foundations need to be laid before you can build on them, so getting the right habits under control first will prevent you from falling off the wagon by trying something you’re not ready for.

This is an entirely new approach to dieting for most people, (in fact, for the first couple of weeks we don’t even talk about food!) but it’s effective and it works. By helping you think about and focus on your goals, it will help you make better choices that will ultimately lead to your desired result.

If you’d like more information on ProCoach, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com/nutrition-coaching where you can watch a video of people who’ve done the program, and contact me with any questions you might have.

If your current efforts aren’t working for you, it’s time to try something new! 

Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, Bootcamp, and other classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Weight Loss 101

In their attempts to lose weight and get fit people often turn to the latest “Diets” to solve their problems for them.

From the most recent trends and Instagram gurus to the well-known weight loss clubs that have been around for years. These multi-million pound businesses have a vested interest. While it is in their interest to get people results, the efficacy of their programs is irrelevant once they’ve sold you their product, so clever marketing is their number one concern.

Before your health and successful weight loss, comes your money.

People buy into things based on what they believe from the marketing and word of mouth/popularity.

Before and after pictures bombard every advertisement for these products because they’re convincing and people want the results they see on the ad, but here’s the thing – no one diet works for everyone!

If 1,000 people follow a diet, it WILL work for a proportion of them, maybe 10%; maybe more, maybe less, but it will work for some.

10% of those 1,000 people is 100 success stories and THOSE are the stories/pictures they’ll use for the advertising. The ads wouldn’t be so convincing if under the fantastic transformations it said “you have a 10% chance of achieving these results”.

I’m not saying that all of the diet plans out there are bad, in fact most of them are very good… for some people.

But how do you figure out which plan is right for you?

The key here is not to follow a specific plan.

While this may sound illogical, let me explain…

A “Diet plan” is set, minimal room for variation or flexibility. Since everybody is different, and what works for you won’t necessarily work for the next person, any plan set out in writing will fail the majority of people.

Instead, you need to look for the common factors in all of the successful diet plans. Trends and patterns, guidelines and rules of thumb.

The most successful diets (and I don’t mean for short-term results, but for lasting, “keep the weight off” results) have a few things in common, they:

● get people preparing their own meals

● get people eating fresh, whole foods as opposed to pre-packed ready meals

● help people build healthy habits into their lifestyle rather than tell them “you can’t have this”

● help people establish their own eating rules and guidelines suited to them specifically

● help people determine how much they should be eating, how often, and when

● look at exercise as a form of calorie reduction rather than just cutting down food intake

● improve the HEALTH of the person, instead of simply looking at their weight

If the main focus is purely on weight loss, you’ll likely do your body harm and end up, long-term, with a failed attempt.

If you make HEALTH the main goal, weight loss will follow and you’ll feel fantastic for it. Long-term success is much more likely.

In order to have success in dieting, you need to look at many factors and create your very own diet plan that works for YOU (and no-one else).

No-one looks the same, no-one acts the same, no-one has the exact same problems; everyone is individual. Your diet needs to be too.

The above listed rules and guidelines do apply across the board, but to tailor a diet to suit YOU, you need to figure out exactly how to integrate all of these things into YOUR lifestyle; kind of like your very own “Owner’s Manual”.

The bare bones of weight loss (or weight gain if that’s your goal) is energy balance, or calories if you will.

While I hate the whole process of counting calories (or allocating points to calories), there’s no escaping the fact that you cannot create energy from nothing.

…meaning you cannot gain weight without eating more than your body needs, and you cannot lose weight if you’re eating more than your body needs.

What your body needs is unique to you and there is no equation or formula that can tell you specifically what you need. There are formulas that will give you a ballpark figure of what someone your height, weight, size needs, but it doesn’t take into account the myriad other factors, like stress, diet history, hormones etc., therefore it needs refining to suit you.

If you’ve slowed your metabolism by following a low-calorie diet for a long period of time, your daily calorie goal according to the calculations will likely be much higher than your actual need (since your body has become more efficient and shut down anything that requires energy that it deems non-essential to survival).

So following a diet that uses these calculations will mean you’ll gain weight.

As an example,

A 35-year old female, weighing 80kg (176lb, or 12 ½ stone), and 162cm (5’4”) tall, who exercises 3 times a week would require 2,030 calories per day to maintain that weight, and any reduction in that number should see her lose weight.

But if our example has been following a low-calorie diet, say 1,200 calories per day for a long period, chances are weight loss has stopped despite being 800 calories below her daily maintenance level.

What’s happened? Her body has stopped all non-essential energy consuming activities and slowed things down to survive on 1,200 calories per day (which is far too low for this individual anyway).

So if, having “failed” at her current weight loss attempts (now it’s stopped working) she started a new diet that used the standard formulas and said that to lose weight she needs to eat 1,800 calories per day (a reasonable assumption given that her maintenance level is 2,030 calories), she would gain weight; because her body has adjusted to burn only 1,200 calories per day. So we now have a 600 calorie surplus!

This is why the standard calculations don’t work. They do not take into account diet history and current eating habits.

For long term success, you need to start your nutrition plan right where you are. Assess your current eating habits and make adjustments from there.

Anyone who is overweight due to over-eating will have success using these formulas because their body is burning as much energy as the calculations would suggest (maybe even a bit more if they’ve been over-eating for a long time). So for them, a simple cut in calories will result in weight loss.

But for anyone who’s been dieting, not over-eating, and has cut calories already, the equation will fail you every time.

As a coach, I rarely see food diaries with excessive amounts of food on them, but regularly see food diaries where people are under-eating yet still not losing weight.

In order to achieve successful and healthy weight loss (or gain), you need to establish what you’re eating now and what results it brings i.e. if you’re gaining, losing, or maintaining your weight.

Once you’ve established your current calorie intake and its results, you can make adjustments from there to get the required outcome.

Be aware though that if you’re already below your daily calorie intake (i.e. maintaining weight at a calorie count below your BMR as in our example before), further reducing calories is NOT the way to go.

You’ll need to find a way to increase calories without gaining weight to get back to a healthy calorie intake and to increase your metabolism to burn more.

This is the real basics of weight loss/gain, and it can’t be cheated. There is no shortcut and there are no supplements that enable you to bypass this simple fact. Energy cannot be created out of nothing, or burned without the required effort – a pill will not burn fat!

The pyramid below shows the order of importance for weight loss (or gain). 

There is a hierarchy here, and trying to utilise any of the sections before you’ve mastered the section below will result in failure.

This, if you read between the lines, tells you exactly what you need to do.

Anyone, be they a trainer in the gym or on the internet, a fitness “guru”, or a huge trusted company, selling you supplements for weight loss without first covering all of the other factors involved are either after your money, or lacking the knowledge to help you. Be VERY cautious who you listen to.

I’ve mentioned in previous articles to be careful who you listen to, and if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not right. Find someone who speaks sense and you trust, and follow their advice over hearsay.

There are many “Diets” out there to choose from, but finding your own will be the best move you ever make. It won’t be one you can find online or buy in a book, or one you can share with someone else once you’ve found it, because it will be YOUR diet, and yours alone.

It will also never be static and will change as you do. As your body changes, so will your dietary needs. If you change your exercise habits, lifestyle habits, or even your job, your nutritional requirements will change too.

So before you choose your next ‘Diet’, think about these things and look over the proposed Diet. Does it tick all the right boxes and does it make sense? Or does it sound easy and too good to be true?

And perhaps most importantly, does it start with you establishing your baseline and work from there (most likely through either a food diary or a number of questionnaires, or both)? Or just ask for your basic details (gender/age/height/weight/goal weight) so it can punch them into an online calculator and generate a program from that.

Or even worse, does it not even ask for any of those and simply give you healthy recipes to eat?! (Which is great – but is just a cook book, not a diet)

Tread carefully and think through your decisions when making dietary choices as they will affect not only your weight, but your health and your sanity too!

www.DartfordBootcamps.com

www.MarkOneFitness.co.uk

How to diet successfully (and easily)

Ok, so most people reading this have probably, at some point, followed a diet. You may be following one now?

But is it too much? Are you struggling to stick to it?

Most people when starting a new diet aim for perfection.

On a scale of 1-10 (1 being terrible, 10 being “perfect”), people aim for 9 or 10 when they start a diet. Cut out ALL of this, don’t have ANY of that, cut 1000 calories a day… then after a week, it all goes out the window. The weekend binge of 6000 calories on Friday and Saturday undoes all of the calories you’ve saved in the week, and does more damage than if you’d not bothered in the first place; and you went through 5 days of hell to get there.

If your diet is currently a “2 out of 10” – what do you need to do to improve and see a change…?

3 out of 10. It’s that simple.

If you normally have a large pizza on a Friday night – would your diet be better, would you be eating less calories, and would you see a change if you swapped that large pizza for a shish kebab or a burger?

Yes!

You’ve swapped one “bad” food, for something slightly better. Do you need to change it for a bean salad? Probably not right now.

Is this change more acceptable to you? And are you more likely to succeed?

Find compromises that you’re happy with (salad may not be one of them right now) and are confident that you can do, and implement them.

If you swap the pizza for a lower calorie, healthier option, you’re on the right track.

If you can eat what you want, as usual, but just skip dessert – you’ve improved your diet and reduced calories. All without giving up the foods you love.

Like chocolate and can’t imagine not having any? Swap it for dark chocolate. You’ve just jumped from a 2 to a 3 out of 10.

The point is, you need to implement small changes that you can actually see yourself being able to stick to, without draining your self-discipline to the point that when someone offers you a piece of cake you want to bite their hand off or punch them in the face.

Take the guilt out of the foods you love, and just work on a slight calorie reduction through small changes. Trying to cut out bread? How about go for thin sliced wholegrain instead of thick sliced white? Another simple improvement that doesn’t leave you wondering what the hell you can eat for lunch.

Make small, easy changes for the better and gradually your diet will improve more and more. You only need to get from a 2 to a 3, then 3 to 4, and so on…

There are so many little changes and swaps you can make to improve your diet, don’t try to make them all at once or go straight for the big ones. Steady weight loss, without the stress, hunger and cravings is far better than rapid weight loss, feeling like s*** and inevitably failing a week or two down the line. And no-one wants to give up the foods they love for lettuce leaves!

You CAN have your cake and eat it, just a little bit less :)

A quick note on calorie reduction:

While it’s not quite as simple as it seems, the bottom line is you DO need to burn more calories than you eat to lose weight. But the clue there is “burn”.

Don’t drop too many calories out of your diet or you’ll cause a number of other problems that will be far worse in the long run, as well as being constantly hungry (which will chip away at your discipline and diet adherence).

If you drop 200 calories from your diet (a modest reduction and easily achievable for almost anyone), but also BURN 200 extra calories per day (again, a perfectly achievable amount), then you’ve just created a 400-calorie-a-day deficit – more than enough to see changes in body composition and weight loss.

This could be as simple as skipping dessert, having one biscuit instead of 3, taking 1 less sugar in your tea/coffee, having a square of dark chocolate instead of a bar of milk chocolate…

…and adding a 20-minute workout into your daily routine (or if you already workout, tweak your routine to burn more calories – switch from running on a treadmill to lifting some weights or circuit training for example).

Sit and have a think about how you can “improve” your diet, without trying to eat like a vegan supermodel, and find a form of exercise you’d be happy to spend 20 minutes of your day doing.

Then make those changes!

If you need more help, I offer one-to-one and group training out of Crayford gym. Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on this, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

The Importance of Guidance

If you’re reading this then the likelihood is that you’re either trying to lose weight (and searching for more ideas since the ones you’ve already tried haven’t worked), or you’re just into health and fitness and after more information.

Either way, you are probably lacking in a few things that will be holding back your results.

Many people question the value of Personal Training, and it’s easily done – it’s not particularly cheap (and if it is then you need to question it), and there are many, many bad trainers out there giving the rest of us a bad name.

But if you can find a good trainer (look for qualifications and experience over cost – “nothing is more expensive than paying for something that doesn’t work”), then they can be worth their weight in gold.

If you’re buying “workouts” and paying them to count your reps – then get out! (You’ll be better off finding a good workout online and training with a friend).

If you’re paying them for a personalised (hence “Personal” Training) workout plan and nutritional guidance based on your current circumstances (not a printout they hand to everyone) then you could be onto something good. Otherwise save your money and go to some classes!

If you can’t afford the trainer you’d like to work with, maybe find out if they offer group training options and split the cost with a friend or two, or your partner…

Guidance is what most people lack in their routines; both diet and exercise. The more is better approach just isn’t correct and quality over quantity is very much more accurate. Doing the right things, at the right times is far more effective and efficient than simply burning yourself out doing random workouts that look good.

With a structured plan, specific to you and your goals, you will achieve more, faster. Not just in terms of fat loss or muscle gain, but also in health – an often overlooked factor in the quest for better body composition.

Without someone to guide you through your plan, you’ll be left to try all the fad diets that come and go, leaving a trail of disappointed, disheartened people in their wake. The yo-yo dieters, following plans that worked for a friend (who has since put all the weight back on again), or got sucked in by clever marketing to buy someone’s products, or are trusting the magazines who use clever headings to attract your attention and tell you what the latest “trend” in fitness is this month.

You need someone to trust and listen to, who can tell you what plan is right for you (because NO plan is right for everyone).

Diet is specific to YOU. 

What you’ve been eating up until now; what you’ve tried in the past; sleeping patterns; work; stress; time available for workouts; time available for cooking; medication; injuries or medical conditions; whether you were overweight or skinny as a child… all of these play a part in determining your diet and exercise plan. Someone recommending a diet or supplement to you because it worked for someone else is ridiculous.

Find someone to listen to and do as they tell you. By all means question it! If they can’t tell you why they’re telling you what they are, then find someone else. But if they can justify their instructions, and it makes sense, follow their guidance.

It won’t be as simple as letting your chosen mentor do all the work – you will have to follow instruction, monitor progress and feedback to them in order for them to make the necessary adjustments. But if you do this you’ll be constantly narrowing in on what works best for you at this current time (nutritional requirements will change as you do so it’s never static).

So filter through all of the information you have and decide who speaks the most sense and resonates with you, and follow their guidance.

If you need more help, I offer one-to-one and group training out of Crayford gym. Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on this, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

What is "Cardio"?

Millions of people around the world insist on jogging. I hate jogging; it’s bad for your joints (especially if you’re overweight), and if you have any muscular imbalances or injuries it will exacerbate the problem.

So if you can’t run, how else will you do your cardio?

Cycling? Rowing? Cross-Training? Swimming?

Contrary to popular belief, these aren’t the only ways you can “do cardio”; lifting weights is cardio!

Cardiovascular/Cardio/CV training is anything that raises your heart rate.

So… if you load up a barbell with your bodyweight, sit it on your back and start squatting, will your heart rate increase? You bet it will! Pump out a dozen reps and you’ll be out of breath too. THAT IS cardio.

Jump up and hang off a bar, and knock out 15 pull-ups – also cardio.

Basically, lifting weights with any sort of intensity is cardio, especially the larger, full-body movements like squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, crawling, tyre flips etc. The more muscles you’re working, the more muscles are crying out for more oxygen.

Basically what I’m saying is you don’t have to do long, boring “cardio” sessions, that will hinder any attempt to build muscle, and is less efficient for fat loss than weight training, and can damage your joints beyond repair. If you lift weights with intensity, you’ll get all of the benefits of CV training, 

with the added, and very important benefit of working and strengthening your muscles.

Want to burn more energy (i.e. calories)? Work your fuel-burners (your muscles) harder.

Yes, there are many ways to train with weights, but for the most part they’ll all work your cardiovascular system and get your heart pumping blood around your body faster and harder, and the benefits far outweigh the traditional and boring methods.

If you’re training for a run/swim/ride etc., then by all means train for that (but remember weight training will also help); but if you’re training for fat loss/fitness, lift weights.

You may not be able to lift weights for as long as you run without stopping, but people have come to realize that interval training is more beneficial for fat loss than steady state (i.e. long and boring) 

cardio anyway. So think of weights as an interval session, but working your muscles too. Win, win!

If you enjoy running, go for a run - just don't over-do it. If you don't enjoy it, then there's really no reason why you need to be doing it.

So the bottom line is this: Lift weights! Regardless of your goals.

The 5 Worst foods in your Kitchen

So you think you’re eating healthily, and compared to most – you might be! But comparing yourself to an unhealthy population, and being in the top half is still far from ideal; and with so much conflicting information how do you know if you’re getting it right?

You might be surprised to find that some of the “healthy” foods you’re buying are actually fattening and bad for you. The very foods that are promoted as being good for you!

Food companies are businesses. They are in"business" to make money, simple. So if they can find a way to reduce costs, increase prices, and sell more products, you can bet they will! (And ethics often doesn't come into it).

So… What are my top 5 worst foods that you might have in your kitchen?

1.       Breakfast Cereal. This is just terrible. It’s loaded with added sugars and sweeteners, and to even be allowed to be sold as ‘food’, the manufacturers have to add synthetic vitamins and minerals to it (because without these, it has zero nutritional value and cannot be called food!). They’ll sell this as a bonus though: “Fortified with…”, “Now with added vitamin…”, and we lap it up like they’ve done us a huge favour! And I won’t even get into how it’s marketed to us but needless to say we're told it's good for us! Also lacking in adequate amounts of protein and fat, it’s incomplete as a meal and totally unacceptable as a breakfast (even if it is “wholegrain” or “high fibre”).

2.       Diet drinks. Cola, Lemonade etc. Fizzy drinks are loaded with sugar which we know is bad (although most people don’t comprehend just how bad!), but replacing them with “diet” versions will have no positive impact on your health! The artificial sweeteners pumped into them, which they HAVE to have to keep them tasting nice, is arguably as bad as the sugar – although we have no idea of all the adverse effects of these sweeteners, some have been linked to cancer, diabetes, obesity, IBS, migraines and more. Bottom line – don’t be fooled, drink water!If your kids won't drink water (ask yourself why - if they've been given other, tastier options, it's no wonder they'll kick up a fuss and refuse to drink plain old water!), try some herbal teas - you can get blackcurrant, lemon, strawberry, mint etc. Just brew them up and let them cool in the fridge. It may take a dozen tries before they'll drink it, but they'll soon get used to it and it'll be far better for them than any other sugary (or "low sugar") drink. Give them the option of that, or water, nothing else. They'll soon start drinking them :)

3.       Low-fat options. We need fat in our diet, period. While some fats are better than others, fats as a whole have been demonised by the food industry to our detriment. Take the fat out of something and it tastes horrible, so they HAVE to replace it with sugar or sweeteners. Low fat=high sugar (or to keep the “calories” down, one of the aforementioned alternative deadly sweeteners!). Fats are essential for every cell in your body to function optimally; be aware of where they’re coming from, but definitely keep them in your diet!Whole milk is better than skimmed. Proper butter is better than margarine. You get the idea...

4.       Granola Bars. Healthy snacking at its best. Take all the cereal problems and squeeze them together into a bar to eat on the go. Advertised as “99 calories” or similar, it’s just a smaller portion of the same! Usually held together with some form of syrup or honey etc. and possibly even topped with a low-fat yoghurt or some other kind of coating.If you want a healthy snack, make up a trail mix of nuts and seeds, or chop up some fresh vegetables like carrots, celery or peppers. Avoid cereals in any form!

5.       Fruit Juice. But fruit’s healthy?! While fruit itself contains sugars, they’re naturally occurring and are accompanied by fibre (the flesh of the fruit) that will aid in digestion and slow down the sugar rush. Still best avoided if weight loss is a goal or you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, but for the most part a healthy food.Fruit juice however has all of the fibre taken away. Squeeze all of the tasty sugar out of a fruit, and you have fruit juice. This is NOT a healthy choice, especially for your children.
Again, you/your children should be drinking water. If you want to add some flavour, use the teas as mentioned above, or squeeze half a lemon or lime into your water for flavour and extra nutrients.

There are no doubt many other insults lying around in your kitchen, but if you can start with these 5, which are among the worst, you'll be off to a great start. Once you've done that, you can start to look at other improvements.
Small improvements add up to big changes over time, with consistency, so take the first step now.

If you need more help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

You, 2015

Without repeating the usual January advice about goal setting, a new exercise regime, whatever new diet is trendy at the moment; I’m going to attempt to give you the basics (again) in hope that this year, rather than starting some crazy new plan that you’ll never stick to, you’ll just make a few small changes and focus on being consistent with them.

Changing your entire lifestyle takes time, and if you try to do it all at once or too quickly it’s a recipe for disaster. So, what you need to do is simplify and streamline.

Attack the weight loss demon from two angles.

Firstly, eliminate the junk. Surprisingly, most people don’t gain weight from eating too much; but from eating the wrong things, at the wrong times. So step one is to eliminate all the processed, sugary foods and drinks (don’t forget drinks!).

For the time being, don’t worry about calories, fats, points or sins. Just change from convenience foods to fresh, single ingredient foods. If it’s got a list of ingredients on the packaging (especially ingredients you can’t even pronounce), don’t eat/drink it.

Don’t worry for now if that seems like it’s not a big enough change. If you can do this, and stick with it, you’ll notice a difference.

Secondly, exercise. This is another one people tend to overdo and burn out. If you already exercise regularly, DO NOT increase how much you do, just increase the intensity that you’re working at.

If you’re not already exercising regularly, do no more than 3 workouts a week to begin with, but again, work HARD when you do them. Keep them short and high intensity; always under an hour.

I’m purposely keeping this simple because most people overthink or overdo things at the start of their program, only to end up getting sick of it and giving up, or just failing.

DON’T over-complicate things. Make a positive change (no matter how small) and be consistent with it, and you’ll have improved your health. Once you’re consistent (that word again!) with that change, make another positive change. And repeat. Gradually, you’ll be improving your healthy lifestyle with almost no effort. One small change is easier to stick to than multiple drastic changes. 

One step at a time and this time next year, you won’t be “dieting” or starting a new regime – you’ll have it covered!

Yes, exercise and nutrition can get a LOT more complicated than this, but the simplest changes are often the most powerful; don’t get sucked in to marketing hype and magazine diets. Keep It Simple.

If you need more help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

What (not) to eat before you exercise…

Most people exercise/workout to lose body fat. Even the people aiming to gain muscle mass (which should be ALL of you) want to lose body fat too.

With this in mind, should you eat before a workout? How long before? And what?

The key thing to remember is that your body is smart and it will use whatever form of energy is most readily available. Why go to the trouble of breaking down and burning fats if there’s a steady source of sugar at hand?

If your goal is fat loss, you need to avoid sugar (carbs) before your workouts. Quite simply, if you have glucose running through your bloodstream, that’s what your body will preferentially burn, NOT fat. Why would it?!

So if you’re one of these people who go into your spin class, sports drink in hand, you need to stop. Right away.

You need to prime your body to burn fat by reducing insulin levels, which are elevated the most by consuming carbohydrates.

If insulin is present, you’ll be pushing sugars INTO cells (either muscle or fat cells, depending on how much exercise you’ve done and/or the amount of carbs you’ve eaten – because once muscle cells are full, they’ll head straight to fat cells for storage!)

If insulin is NOT present (i.e. you haven’t eaten sugary carbs), then your body will be relying on the stored energy in your muscles and your fat cells.

So grabbing a banana before your workout is a BAD idea, as are any sports drinks (trust me, avoid the supposed “low sugar/calorie” options too).

Save your carbs for AFTER your workout and/or your evening meal. This will replenish the muscle glycogen you burned during your workout, without storing excess as fat (assuming you don’t overdo the carbs that is – eat too many and you’ll be right back to fat storage!)

Nutrition can get very complicated, but for the most part, it’s the simple changes that’ll make the biggest differences. Get on top of those, and you’ll probably never have to worry about the minor tweaks and details unless you’re planning on competing.

Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition coaching or Bootcamp Fitness classes.