It's Christmas!!!!!

It's that time of year again when it seems all your hard work in the gym, all the sweating in those classes and your diet goes to pot and you feel you've gained a few stone in only a few days! It doesn't have to be like that. Here are my top 5 tips in enjoying your Christmas without putting on too many pounds. 1.) Don't allow Christmas to last too long:- enjoy yourself eat what you want but only for 3-4 days. Don't allow to stuff yourself for over two weeks, which can easily happen if you just sit there and eat leading up to Christmas, than Christmas itself and go through to the new year. 2.) Don't overload the plate for your Christmas dinner-you want to leave room for pudding, and you will comfortably feel full not feel like an over-stuffed turkey! 3.)Take a walk after Christmas dinner-this will burn off a few calories, give you energy and avoid attacking those tin of chocolates too early. 4.) At parties and Christmas tea choose more natural foods such as sea food, lean meats and chicken rather than sausage rolls, spring rolls and pizza which are higher in carbohydrates and saturated fats and lower in good quality proteins. 5.) Get some exercise in between Christmas and new year:- go for a jog or visit the gym. This will make it much easier to restart your fitness regime in the new year rather than having two weeks off and doing nothing. I hope this helps so you can avoid some of the pit falls of the Christmas season. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year. All the best and I will see you all in 2014.

Exercise can help reduce brain damage caused by alcohol

According to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder, regular aerobic exercise such as walking, running and cycling may help in reducing the damage alcohol can do to the brain's 'white matter' and even help prevent damage. The study, Alcoholism:-Clinical & Experimental Research, used, 60 moderate to heavy drinkers who all underwent a modified type of MRI scan to enable researchers to follow the position and path of water molecules travelling parallel to nerve fibres in the white matter as they travelled through the brain. "What our data suggests is that, beyond just giving people a different outlet for cravings and urges for alcohol, exercise might also help to repair the damage that may have been done to the brain," explained Angela Bryan, co-author of the study. "It might even be a more promising treatment approach for alcohol problems because it is both a behavioural treatment and a treatment that has the potential to make the brain more healthy." However she warns, "it is not our intention to suggest that a person can erase the physiological damage of heavy drinking by exercising.

How to get a flat and toned stomach

One of the main fitness goals for both men and women is to get a flat stomach. But unfortunately this goal is often never realised fully. To help us understand this we have to look at the reasons we store fat around the stomach. Belly fat is a result of too much processed food in the daily diet, inactivity & our body's hormonal response. For example, high levels of the hormone cortisol (which is elevated by stress, overtraining and lack of sleep) affects our response to insulin and encourages fat storage around the middle. So how can you get a rippling 6 pack safely & efficiently? It all begins with nutrition. First of all, if we look at the abdominal muscle group we will see that each of us has abs, and that it is the natural shape of the muscle which gives the appearance of a 'six pack', however in order to make these muscles prominent we must melt away the overlying subcanteous fat layer, & thicken the muscle. In order to do this you need to clean up your diet by reducing or eliminate processed foods, grains and wheat (it is thought 6-7% of the population are intolerant to gluten), as these can cause inflammation of the stomach & promote fat storage. Also drinking plenty of water to flush out any nasty toxins – another cause of fat storage. Processed foods can cause bloating, and too much salt in the diet can cause water retention which will affect the appearance of the midsection. Increase your protein levels by eating plenty of chicken, meat, fish, pulses, eggs and protein shakes. So what to eat? Try a nutritional shake for breakfast add some fruit for added vitamins and minerals and this contributes to your '5 a day'. For lunch chicken and salad and for dinner fish or meat with plenty of vegetables and a little bit of carbohydrates such as rice, pasta or potatoes. Have a couple of healthy snacks such as a protein bar or a piece of fruit to eat between meals in order to maintain a high metabolism and stop your body falling into 'starvation mode.' Although nutrition is about 80% of the battle you still need to exercise to achieve those results. What type of exercise is best? Exercising at a high intensity with compound movements, and bouts of high intensity cardio are a quick way to melt away excess fat. Be sure to get adequate rest & good quality sleep in order to reduce your cortisol levels. Try yoga or Pilates to help strengthen the core muscles and improve posture. Ideal ab exercises include woodchops, hanging leg raises, Russian twists, reverse curls, V-sits, medicine ball throws and plank. Once you clean up your diet and perform some of these exercises you will soon start to see a difference. Try writing a food diary to monitor progress - often people don't realise what they eat throughout the week until they see it written down on paper. Preparing food in advance is also a key way to stay on track. Try cooking extra when preparing a meal and freeze it for later this saves both time, money and stops you from grabbing something convenient yet unhealthy which will scupper your goals. Try following these tips and watch your abs emerge from that body fat.

The Importance of Nutrition to get the Best Results

As pointed out on the BBC program the other night, 'The Men that made us Thin,' exercise alone can't help us lose weight as doing moderate exercise will only make a small dent in our overall daily energy expenditure. The importance of nutrition is often overlooked in the pursuit of losing weight or improving ones health, which is a bit mad considering 80% of weight loss is achieved through healthy nutrition. So you can see if you don't get the nutrition right you will be setting yourself up to fail. In order to succeed and reach your fitness goals you must seriously look at what you put in your mouth on a daily basis and see if you are selling yourself short. So how can you get your nutrition on track in order to get the best results? An easy option whould be a Herbalife Formula 1 shake. This is the number 1 meal-replacement shake in the world, underpinned by science that shows in clinical studies that daily use of a meal-replacement shake along with moderate exercise has been proven effective for managing weight. This great drink comes in 6 tasty favours including strawberry, chocolate, cookies and cream and tropical fruit. Each shake is calorie controlled at just 220 Kcal and is a healthy meal in a glass as all the nutrients that you would find in a well-balanced meal such as protein, carbohydrates, essential vitamins and minerals are present. Being a G.P. Referal instructor and personal trainer I speak to a lot of people and find a large percentage either skip meals due to lack of time or appetite or have a high calorie and saturated fat meal which is often lacking the essential nutrients the body needs to be healthy. I knew there had to be a solution out there and that's why I become an independent distributer for Herbalife. They have loads of other fantastic products that can enhance your well being such as Formula 1 express bars, protein bars, multi-vitamins and 'Liftoff', a low calorie energy drink that you can have anytime and anywhere which is only 10Kcal per serving and has 100% of your vitamin C, which helps to alleviate tiredness and 100% of your B group vitamins for normal energy metabolism. If that's not enough it even contains 75g of cafferine, to help increase alertness and improve concentration. This is a great alternative to all those high calorie energy drinks that are on the market these days. Whether you are an elite athlete, recreational gym user or office worker that needs a pick me up during the 3 o'clock slump, Herbalife has a product for you. Why not check out my website that has a link to the Herbalife website, which shows their full product range. If you like what you see than please contact me for further details.

Hydration & Exercise

Around 60-70% of our body is made of water, so it's fair to say that water is vital for survival. Drinking 8-10 glasses of water each day is recommended, but during exercise or when in hot environments, we need to drink more, because we sweat more. But is water enough? Or do we need sports drinks to stay properly hydrated? Sports drinks will keep you well hydrated and give you energy if you're participating in high intensity exercise for 90 minutes or more. However, if you're not exercising to this level, plain water will be enough to re-hydrate you. Studies have shown as little as one percent dehydration can cause major changes in body temperature, while two percent dehydration will drop your performance levels significantly! So to operate efficiently it's vital to keep your fluid levels up. Other drinks that contain high amounts of carbohydrates (such as Lucozade and Red Bull and soft drinks) stop water being absorbed quickly and therefore can delay hydration, so are not suitable before exercise. So if you're doing a high intensity workout that is more than 90 minutes in duration than choose a sports drink. But, if you're not working out to this intensity and you're trying to lose/control your weight than water is best as otherwise you may find yourself putting on weight because of the extra carbohydrate content. If you don't like the taste of plain water, add a little cordial to give some flavor or a slice of lemon, orange or a sprig of mint. Hydration tips for exercise Make sure you're well hydrated before you exercise — start drinking approximately two hours before Keep your fluids topped up during exercise Always remember to re-hydrate after exercise.

Get a body like a celeb do kickboxing

Want a body like Angelina Jolie, Carmen Electra, Eva Mendes or guns and abs like Van Damme? Than learning kickboxing is the answer. All these celebs honed their toned bodies by practicing the martial art known as kickboxing. Kickboxing burns body fat, tones and strengthens muscle and increases stamina. Its a total body blaster working arms, chest, back, abs, legs and butts. Also its a great stress buster, where you can release that energy and channel it into something good. In a typical training session you can burn between 600 and 888 calories an hour. This will depend on intensity levels and weight of the person taking part but as you can see you can burn a serious amount of calories in a short space of time. Kickboxing also improves balance, co-ordination, flexibility and can build confidence and self-esteem. So get the body that you want and punch and kick your way to fitness.

Train like an Olympian and live longer

According to a study published by the British Medical Journal, researchers compared the life expectancy of 15,174 Olympic athletes, who won medals between 1896 and 2010, with that of the general population and found that they lived 2.8 years longer. The authors suggested possible explanations included genetics, physical activity, a healthy lifestyle and wealth and status that comes from international sporting success. However an accompanying editorial suggests that those who do at least 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous intensity activity can gain similar survival advantages over the inactive general population. The authors concluded, "although the evidence points to a small survival effect of being an Olympian, careful reflection suggests that similar health benefits and longevity could be achieved by all of us through regular physical activity. We could and should all award ourselves that personal gold medal."

Why a Low Calorie Diet Doesn't Work

For many years the old mantra of calories in and energy out has been used in the media and some areas of the fitness industry to explain that if you consume the average amount of calories (males 2500/females 2000) needed for the body to perform its daily functions than you will not put on any weight. If you use up more energy than you consume, you will therefore lose weight and if you consume too many calories the body needs than it will store any excess as fat. This is a commonly held belief across the general public and the scientific world and has been upheld for many years. However if you look more closely at the data and the studies that have been done in recent years you will see that it's not as simple as calories in and energy out. France consumes a higher than average amount of calories as well as the highest consumers of fat at 42% of daily intake but have the second lowest obesity rate in all of Europe! Whereas some countries such as Serbia and Montenegro have low calorie intakes but much higher obesity levels. So what is going on? Research is now suggesting that it may be a combination of a variety of influences such as genetics, hormones and the environment. It was observed that some animals and humans appear to have an increased susceptibility to gaining weight compared to others. Studies showed that weight gain in obesity prone mice is higher than wild mice fed the same high fat diet. Obesity prone mice seem to prefer high fat diets. Subjects with a predisposed tendency to become obese seem to have an impaired ability to increase the speed of burning fat and carbohydrates in response to a high fat diet. Women with a family history of obesity had a stronger risk of gaining weight when exposed to a high fat diet than those who had none. There are many hormones in the body that can influence what we eat, how much we eat and how often. Ghrelin is released to stimulate hunger when the body needs more energy. The interesting thing about this is it has an inverse relationship with BMI. So in thin people it drives them to consume more and in overweight and obese people who have lost weight, the levels increase as well to encourage the body to return to its original weight. This is why weight loss can be hard to maintain in the obese population. In obese humans the central nervous system just like lean muscle (see last blog for details) can become insulin resistant and signals do not reach the brain to tell it the stomach is full and therefore too much is consumed resulting in an increase in body weight. A study in 2002 (Pirozzo) proved that although a calorie and fat restricted diet worked for the first 6 months over a longer period of time, 12 and 18 months, weight began to slowly creep back on. Other studies have shown the average maintained weight loss, 3-5 years after starting a low calorie diet was only 3KG. The average regain in weight at the 3-5 year follow up represented 76-85% of the initial weight lost (Grodstein et al, 1996 and Anderson et al, 2001). So as you can see it's a combination of factors that can cause obesity rather than simply the amount of calories you are consuming. It seems that one factor will not cause weight gain but a series of events will, such as a person who has a tendency for weight gain consuming processed foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates on a regular basis and is not active. If you're overweight or obese it's better to try to consume natural foods which are high in proteins and fats, such as meat, fish, chicken and dairy products that will keep you fuller for longer and exercise regularly rather than relay on a low calorie and fat diet.

Whose The Real Enemy Fats or Carbohydrates?

For as long as I can remember we have been told that fats are bad for us and should be reduced and the majority of our dietary intake should be from complex carbohydrates, such as potatoes, pasta, rice and bread. Government guild lines inform us that half of our intake should come from these carbohydrates and 35% from fats, of which no more than 10% should come from saturated fat. The final 10-15% needs to come from protein sources, in order to have a balanced diet. These guild lines are fine if you are a healthy weight, however there is an increasing amount of scientific evidence to prove that if you are obese (BMI of 30 or more), than this advice will only make matters worse. As carbohydrates are consumed they are broken down into glycogen, the body's preferred energy source. The body will then produce insulin to help transport the glycogen into the muscles for use or storage. However over time there maybe too much glycogen and insulin in the body and the muscles can become more resistant. Although lean muscle becomes resistant, fatty tissue is much slower in becoming resistant and so the excess glycogen is pushed easily into this tissue and is stored as fat. Other macronutrients such as protein and fats do not cause such a high insulin response and as there is a reduced amount of glucose in the system, the body is encouraged to burn energy from its fat stores rather than the glycogen. Foods that have naturally occurring fats in them such as meats, chicken, oily fish, nuts and dairy products, tend to have a higher amount of protein in them too and together they will make you feel fuller quicker and for longer. Foods which are processed will be high in saturated fat, such as pies, sausage rolls, crisps, cakes, french fries and pizzas and these tend to have a low amount of protein but a high amount of carbohydrates. This will cause too much insulin to be produced and further lean muscle resistance and increased fat storage. These foods will also not keep you fuller for longer and therefore will encourage you to eat more later on. So if your BMI is about 27 or more and you are struggling with getting your weight down then try lowering your carbohydrates intake by having 1-2 carbohydrates free meals a day to encourage your body to burn energy from your fat cells instead. Combine this with exercise, which also helps decrease muscle resistance and you may be surprised by the results. Have a go and let me know how you get on as I would love to hear from you. Good luck.

3 fold increase of obesity patients going to hospital

According to the papers this week in only the last 5 years there has been a triple increase of people going to hospital and being diagnosed with obesity. The medical conditions which obesity was the main contributor included, breathing problems, bedsores and heart conditions. There were 11,740 such admissions last year with 3 times more women admitted than men according to the findings from the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Their findings found that fewer than 2 in 5 (37%) of adults in England are classed as 'normal' weight according to Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is the comparison of a person's height to their total body weight. A BMI of 25-29 would be considered as overweight with 30+ as obese. While in 1993 half of women were considered a healthy weight, the proportion has now dropped to 39%. The proportion of men dropped from 41 to 31% over the same period. Hospitals are also performing more weight-loss surgery with 8,790 operations carried out last year including stomach stapling and gastric bypass. This compares with only 1,950 procedures 5 years ago. Most operations were performed on women, 6,710 compared with 2,080 men. A toxic environment of easy available ready meals, high fat and sugary foods, take-aways and fast foods, which often are loaded with high saturated fats and salt and fizzy drinks, which are filled with sugars and less activity in our daily lives are to blame for this obesity epidemic. But the power of reversing this tide of ill health is in your hands. By making some small changes you can make a huge difference to your health. Start off with cutting down on foods which are loaded with saturated fats such as fried chicken and chips and replace with grilled chicken and jacket potato. Aim to have your 5 a day of fruit and veg and only have a take-away treat once a week. Cut out or down on chocolate, sweets, crisps and biscuits. Cut out the fizzy drinks for water or squash. Aim to do activities that are enough to make you sweat and be out of breath for 150 mins per week-this works out as 30 mins, 5 days per week. You can even break this down to 3 x 10 mins sections if you are time restrained or not fit enough to do moderate exercise for 30 mins in one go. Drag your family away from the computer and t.v and out for a walk in the woods or play a ball game in the park. Start taking these small steps and see how you can make a difference to yours and your families health in next to no time. Let me know your experiences and how you're getting on.

New Boxercise Class starts soon

I'm starting a new Boxercise class at Simply Studio, 120 North Street, Romford on Wednesday mornings at 10.00-11.00 am. This fun and dynamic fitness class starts on 27th Feb and brings effective drills and techniques taken from the worlds of martial arts and boxing to help burn fat, tone muscle, increase stamina, flexibility and combat stress. This non-sparring circuit class will use pads and shields and help tone and strengthen muscles like never before. Price per class is £5.00. Why don't you tell all your friends and come along.

High Sugar Diet Can Kerb Learning

A study of rats by the University of California found that too much sugar can prevent learning, while omega-3 is thought to boost it. Two groups of rats were fed drinking water laced with a sugar solution. One group was also given flaxseed oil, which contains omega-3, the fatty acid that is found in oily fish. The rats were all given standard rat food to eat for five days before consuming the sugared water. Twice a day the rats were placed in a maze, fitted with markers to help them remember their route. After 6 weeks of testing and feeding them the solution, the study concluded that the rats that were given the flaxseed, navigated the maze much quicker than those that did not receive the omega-3 fatty acids. The rats that were on the sugar solution had a reduced ability to think clearly and to recall the route that they'd learned 6 weeks earlier. They also started to display insulin resistance, which was the most likely cause of their memory loss. This is because insulin helps to regulate how brain cells use and store sugar for the energy that is needed to process thoughts and emotions. So if you want to think more clearly, rather than grabbing an energy drink grab yourself a tuna sandwich or some susi instead!

Benefits of wearing a sports bra during exerise

Up to 72% of women who exercise report breast discomfort while exercising, which can be caused by too much movement and skin chaffing, both of which can reduce performance. Research carried out has reported that 44% of women train in an ordinary bra rather than a dedicated sports bra. In a survey, 85% of women who wore a sports bra said it helped to improve their enjoyment of exercise. With the average 36C sized breast weighing in at 300 grams, uncontrolled movement caused by training in an ordinary bra may not only cause discomfort during exercise but could be damaging the fagile breast tissue, which over time can cause sag. Research has shown training in a sports bra helps to reduce breast movement by up to 38%. Sports bras are often made with performance enhancing materials such as breathable fabric that allows the skin to breath properly while exercising. This allows air to circulate to cool the body down and take sweat away from the skin to reduce rubbing. Often the material and fastenings are made stronger and are more durable than an ordinary bra. So if you are training regularly or are thinking of doing so soon, than investing in a sport bra could be a wise decision and help improve your sports performance.