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10 Weight Loss Tips

Posted on: Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Categories: Diet, Exercise, Fitness, Nutrition, Personal trainer

1. STICK TO NON-STICK

Trim down the need for cooking with oil by using non-stick pans. Dry frying or grilling food can mean a reduction in a vast amount of oil consumed in a short space of time and therefore has the positive effect of cutting those calories without you having to go hungry. It really can be that simple!

2. USE SMALLER CROCKERY

Over the years portion sizes in restaurants and cafes have got bigger and bigger in the West and our idea of a healthily sized meal has increased to match. It’s easier than you think to trick your mind into eating less. Simply use smaller crockery and cutlery and you will be amazed how quickly you adapt to feeling full with smaller portions without you even being aware of it. This doesn’t mean you have to re-vamp your kitchen, just give yourself a little help in learning to listen to your body, so you can stop eating before your feel full.

3. DON’T FORGET TO CHEW

It takes about twenty minutes for the stomach to signal to the brain that it is full which means that if you eat too fast you are in danger of consuming more calories than necessary. Taking the time to chew each mouthful for longer and therefore savouring your food in a relaxing way will reduce the tendency towards overeating. Furthermore, eating more slowly is healthier for your digestive system. If you still feel a little peckish after finishing your meal, don’t deny yourself more food, just put it on hold for twenty minutes and get on with your day. More often than not you will forget about food and not need to eat anything else till the next meal.

4. EAT SOY BEANS

The vegetable protein found in beans makes you feel fuller for a longer period of time and will therefore stop you craving unhealthy snacks between meals. Soy beans help you burn fat by breaking down fatty deposits and the lecithin they contain prevents cells from storing fat.

Add beans to soups, salads, and classic dishes like spaghetti bolognaise. Ask your personal trainer for ideas.

5. PACK THOSE NUTRIENTS

If you know you will be out for the day take a packed lunch with you. Not only will it save you money it will enable you to eat healthily and you are much less likely to stop off at McDonalds. Pack sandwiches with handfuls of raw spinach or watercress and make up a fruit salad for pudding or snacks.

6. NEGATIVE CALORIES

If its snacks you crave then opting for low calorie ones is obvious, but some foods give your body no choice but to lose weight. Many foods take more energy to digest them than the energy they contain in the form of calories. You can feel full yet lose weight simply by eating these negative calorie foods and the list includes apples, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumber, green beans, lettuce, onion, papaya, pineapple, raspberries, spinach, strawberries and tangerines. Make sure your eat them raw and of course adding calorific foods to them isn’t going to work!

7. LOSE THE SAUCE

It is well known that sauces such as mayonnaise are high in fat and tomato sauce is high in sugar and the addition of sauces to main meals and sandwiches can vastly increase the number of calories consumed without us really being aware of how much. Substituting these with lower calorie options like mustard can make a difference. You may even notice an improvement in flavour, so try lime on fish or avocado and add a healthy zing to your culinary experience. Personal trainers will be able to help you incorporate healthier options into your diet plan.

8. ADD SOME SPICE TO YOUR LIFE

Just half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper added to a meal meant diners consumed an average of 60 calories less at their following meal compared to those without this spicy additive in a recent experiment. Research showed that lacing food with cayenne pepper reduced the preoccupation with food as well as the tendency to crave salt, sugar and foods high in fat. This spice (as well as chilli, black pepper and ginger) also raises the metabolism which leads to the burning of more calories.

9. ICE AND A SLICE

Most of us know how important it is to drink water and the prevailing wisdom recommends eight glasses a day for more energy and less hunger amongst other benefits, but if you drink cold water your body is forced to do a little extra work in heating the water back up therefore increasing your metabolism which means you lose weight.

10. CLEAN YOUR TEETH

Yes of course for healthy teeth, but also to help with weight loss surprisingly. After you’ve eaten your (reduced!) portion of food, clean your teeth straight away or if this is unpractical chew on some minty sugar-free gum for a few minutes. This will signal to your brain that it’s the end of mealtime and if you are tempted to eat more you will soon find that most food doesn’t taste that great with mint.

The Fat Personal Trainer’s Training Programme

Posted on: Friday, May 4th, 2012

Categories: Personal trainer

Firstly, Thank you for all your text messages asking about how my training was going.

For those of you that did not know I (Jason) have recently started with a personal trainer. Amusing I know! But I am not  ashamed to admit that I need a trainer and can see the benefits with having one.

Last week was terrible. I was sore all weekend but I am now on Day 12 and have completed 12 training sessions on the trot.

Here goes…………………

Last Saturday -  5km Run

Last Sunday – 5kn Run

Monday – Weight Session -  Chest

Tuesday – (with my personal trainer)

3 x Circuit

60 seconds on each exercise with a 2 minute rest between circuits

Arnie Press (Shoulders)
Tricep Dips
Plank
Press Ups
DB Bent Over Row

Intervals on Treadmill – 6 x 1min on / 30secs off. Pace 14km/hr at an incline of 4.0

Wednesday – Back and Shoulder Weights
4 x 8 reps – 90secs rest between set.

Warm up – Rowing Machine 3 mins / Stretches.

Barbell Shoulder Press – 50kg
Weight Frontal Raise – 20kg
Cable Face Pulls
Reverse Grip Bent Over Row – 60kg
Lat Pull Down 75kg

Thursday – Circuit / Cardio

3 Circuits – 3mins rest in between circuits

20 Jump Squats
20 Clap Press Ups
20 EZ Bar Curls
10 Swiss Ball Roll Outs
20 Jump Lunges
10 Spiderman Press Ups

5 Pull Ups

500m Row Under 1.50mins/500 metre pace

Sleep more to lose weight

Posted on: Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

Categories: Personal trainer

Losing weight is so easy! No need to exercise. Don’t listen to the advice your personal trainer gives you regarding healthy eating. Just get more than nine hours sleep a night and the weight will drop off you. Surely this can’t be true and even if it is, will it encourage bad habits when it comes to our health?

Research on over two thousand twins carried out at the University of Washington investigated the effect of genes on obesity. Certain genes are already known to be linked with weight gain in that they influence the way the body burns calories, fat storage, the speed sugar is utilised in our bodies and how full we feel after eating.

What is interesting about this research lead by Dr Nathaniel Watson is that those subjects who had less than seven hours sleep a night were more likely to be effected by the genes associated with weight and were in turn heavier than their lazy counterparts. Sleep for less than seven hours a night and your body mass index (BMI) could be double that of a person who regularly clocks up nine hours in the land of nod. The reasons for these findings are inconclusive and Dr Watson is appropriately ambivalent. Shorter sleep could promote conditions that enable the relevant genes to express themselves or protracted sleep could quash this manifestation.

From this preliminary study published in the journal, Sleep it does appear that extended sleep would help with weight loss, but doesn’t provide the whole picture.

Before we all take to our beds in a bid to lose weight, let’s not forget the vast number of benefits exercise and healthy eating brings. A safe and effective exercise program as designed by a personal trainer (incorporating essential periods of rest) reduces the likelihood of you developing heart disease, circulation problems and diabetes. Personal trainers can also advise on diet to ensure your body has the nutrients required for optimum well-being and of course, sleep is crucial in processing these nutrients for regeneration and healing.

Big Body Squad

Posted on: Friday, April 27th, 2012

Categories: Personal training

What is it like to be really Fat?

Big Body Squad is a documentary series broadcast on Channel 5 on  Wednesday. It follows the specialists enlisted to care for extremely overweight people.

These specialists include carers as well as paramedics and fire crews all working with equipment designed by engineers specifically for people carrying excess weight.

We see the difficulty an ambulance team have in simply getting an enormously heavy patient home and episode two a morbidly obese woman was filmed moving into her house that had been modified to accommodate her 48 stone.

Some people do not have the strength to move themselves, so a team of carers will turn them over in bed to prevent them from developing bed sores and wash them because they cannot fit into a shower or bath or reach certain parts of their body themselves.

If they have to go to hospital supersize ambulances have to be used and builders sometimes have to remove windows because doors are too small. The plight of individuals featured in this documentary is at the far end of the obesity spectrum, but highlights the burgeoning problem of obesity in the UK.

In the program a manufacturer of reinforced, supersized furniture has seen a rise in profits of 400% in the last five years which is indicative of the population becoming more and more obese.

Presently, a quarter of adults in the UK are obese and if current trends continue then this proportion is set to rise to one third within 8 years. Consequently, there is a massive strain on our national resources and health service which means that other health issues inevitably become side-lined.

The ideal solution for preventing the escalation of this obesity epidemic is to instil healthier habits in people before weight gain snowballs. This means people being informed when it comes to nutrition, and exercise as well as understanding the psychological factors that underpin binge eating.

Unfortunately, individuals do not always have the right mind set or knowledge to address bad habits when it comes to health. The government needs to play a role in educating society as a whole, but this process is wrought with the competing influence of big businesses within the food and drink industry.

Late last year a panel of obesity experts was disbanded amongst accusations that the government preferred to confer with food and drinks companies than with the advisory group.

It is also the responsibility of parents to ensure their children are getting enough exercise and eating healthily. Intervention on a societal level needs to support parents by targeting youngsters as figures from the NHS show that the problem of obesity in children is on the rise. 31.6% of 10 and 11 year olds were overweight in 2007 whereas in 2011 that percentage rose to 33.4%.

So what is the solution?

Personal training can help the whole family achieve this. In one session a personal trainer can offer nutritional advice and go through work outs for each family member even though their individual levels of fitness will vary. With cases of morbidly obese people, reversing the process of overeating can also be achieved through personal training and even severe health problems associated with a cardiovascular system that is functioning below par can be attenuated.

Personal trainers are not only adept at designing an exercise regime to suit a particular level of fitness and mobility they can also adapt the program as health improves. For those whose mobility is restricted a mobile personal trainer can deliver the work out to the person’s home.

Sexercise

Posted on: Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Categories: Personal training

Sex is a great form of exercise and ‘sexercise’ has many of the same benefits as personal training, but there are other advantages too:

1. As with aerobic exercise during a personal training session, sexercise can be cardiovascular and will therefore improve the health of your heart, physically speaking. Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health maintained that the risk of men suffering from a heart attack was reduced by half if they had sex more than twice a week rather than less than once a month.

2. For men, frequent sex in their 20’s is associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer later on in life.

3. For women, exercising the pelvic floor muscles during sex reduces the chances of becoming incontinent during older adulthood.

4. High blood pressure is associated with many health problems and sexercise will lower your blood pressure. Research published in Biological Psychology discovered that people living together had lower diastolic blood pressure if they frequently had sex.

5. Regular sexercise will burn calories and help you maintain a healthy weight which is essential for general wellbeing. Your personal trainer can also offer nutritional advice and you will not only feel great, you will look better too.

6. David Weeks, a neuropsychologist found that people who have more frequent sex (four or five times a week compared to the average twice a week) look younger. He claims that the happy chemicals, endorphins and oxytocin produced through loving sex keep us looking young.

7. These same chemicals are involved in pain reduction. When subjects had their fingers pricked, those who had inhaled oxytocin vapour were much less sensitive to the pain as shown in a study published in the Bulletin of Experimental Biology.

8. Oxytocin will also help you get to sleep after sexercising.

9. Sexercise can keep you generally healthy as it is associated with raised levels of immunoglobulin A. This antibody will boost your immunity and help prevent you catching colds.

10. The reduction in stress associated with sex is highly documented and intercourse is much better than abstinence.

Personal Trainer Hires Trainer (Program 3)

Posted on: Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Categories: Personal trainer, Personal training

Program 3 – 26th April 2012

Comments: My word I feel like I have been beaten up!!

Warm Up:

3 minutes on the Rower followed by whole body mobility/stretching

Workout:

30 Reps on 6 exercises followed by a 30 second Row – 3 minutes rest in between circuits.

1. Burpees

2. Dips

3. Sit Ups

4. Kettlebell Swings

5. Mountain Climbers

6. Bicep Curls

7. 30 second Row at 1.35/500metre Pace

Cool Down:

5 mins cooldown on the Bike and Stretches

Comments: Enjoyed the Session. Alot of Kettlebell Swings so not sure how my back is going to feel tomorrow. Awesome first week back training and look forward to next Tuesday…..bring it on.

Personal Trainer hires a Trainer (Program 2)

Posted on: Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Categories: Personal trainer, Personal training

Program 2 – 25th April 2012

Comments: Aching from my previous days session and a little worried about what I have today. But hey lets do it………………….

Warm Up:

5 minutes on the Treadmill followed by whole body mobility/stretching

Workout:

Back/Shoulder weights
Rower intervals-30/20 x5
60secs rest between sets.

Back
Bent over row 3×12 with 50kg
Reverse Flyes 3×12 with 9kg dumbbells
Single arm pulls (machine) 3×12 with 50kg on cable machine

Shoulders
Shoulder press 3×12 with 16kgs dumbbells
Upright row 3×12 with 35kg easibar
Lateral raise 3×12 with 10kg dumbbells

Cardio
5 Rowing intervals.
30 seconds (distance between 145 and 150 metres) with a 20 second rest in between

Cool Down:

5 mins cooldown on the Bike and Stretches

Comments: Enjoyed the Session. Rowing finished me off……..Stars in my eyes! Great but the feeling of getting fit again is brilliant. Not really looking forward to my session tomorrow because my legs are aching like……….

Personal Trainer hires a Trainer (Program 1)

Posted on: Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Categories: Personal trainer, Personal training

Program 1 – 24th April 2012

Comments: First training for approximately 2 to 3 months. Good variety of exercises covering the whole body. Struggled on the Hanging Knee Raises (need to have a very strong core). Following day aching like a bi*** and think my personal trainer is a total bas****! Sort of looking forward to my next session.

Warm Up:

5 minutes on the Treadmill followed by whole body mobility/stretching

Workout:

100 Rep circuit x3                             
10 exercises x 10 reps.
2mins rest in between each set

1. DB shoulder press                           
2. Burpees
3. Straight leg raises
4. Dumbbell squat jump
5. Reverse flyes
6. Medicine ball twists
7. Lateral raises
8. Press ups
9. Deadlifts
10. Hanging knee raises

Cool Down:

5 mins cooldown on the Bike and Whole Body Stretches lieing on the floor

ALL YOU CAN EAT OFFERS

Posted on: Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Categories: Uncategorized

The idea of offering as much food as you can eat for a set price started off in America in the 1930’s and all-you-can-eat offers became particularly popular in low income areas.

Quantity rather than quality seemed to be the key to getting the punters through the door. Golden Corral which opened in the USA in 1973 took off and led to many other food outlets following suit. The UK food chain, Taybarns which launched in the middle of an economic downturn mirrors Golden Corral and now has a turnover of over one billion pounds a year. A family of four can eat an unlimited amount of food for £17.99 and proves popular in working class areas of the country. With its 34 metre food line, Taybarns has a vast array of familiar food on offer and is affordable for low income families.

There are no family arguments about what type of restaurant to go to because many all-you-can-eat outlets offer a wide range of food such as burgers, pizza, pasta and a carvery  all on one huge counter. Individual family members can choose what they want to eat and go back for a different plate of food if they don’t like it. If you go to a restaurant and you don’t like the meal you have ordered, you are stuck with it whereas at an all-you-can-eat chain you can choose something else.

In restaurants specialising in foreign menus such as Chinese or Italian food the freedom to try more unusual dishes is on offer as well as the stalwarts that people opt for time and time again. Generally though, when times are hard people don’t want to be experimental when it comes to eating out. They want familiarity and affordability. The more they can get for their limited funds the better. Of course, the more that is eaten, the better value for money which in turn encourages greed. It is much harder for people to exercise portion control and to stop eating when they feel full if eating more means better value for money. These great value eateries attract customers in droves which in turn promotes more aggressive marketing ploys to deal with competition. Consequently, the options available to encourage us to eat more and more for less money are on the increase as is the size of waistlines worldwide.

Taking advantage of the multitude of offers and enticing marketing ploys inevitably leads to weight gain and in some cases this is directly rewarded. On a recent trip to  Las Vegas I was horrified to find a restaurant that boasts OVER 350 LBS EATS FREE.

With an offer like this why would anyone want to be a lightweight?

With so many offers encouraging us to eat more for less money it is not surprising that obesity levels are on the rise in the western world.  We have a worldwide epidemic when it comes to obesity and the associated health problems are vast. Increases in diabetes and heart disease to name but two cost health services billions worldwide and the multitude of all-you-can-eat outlets doesn’t help.

Our personal trainers are getting more and more requests from clients needing help to shift excess weight through exercise. Because these clients have so much weight to lose it can take months to get them back to a weight that enables to have a ‘normal’ life.

Saying that, the benefits of exercising with the help of a personal trainer can lead to feelings of well- being that far outweigh the pleasure of cramming in as much food as possible in a short space of time.

Lose Weight by Drinking Less

Posted on: Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

Categories: Diet, Exercise, Fitness, Personal trainer

With the wide array of diets and fads promising weight loss wouldn’t it be great to find an easy solution to weight gain? Well here’s something that really will work. Simply drink low calorie drinks instead of sugary soft drinks and you could lose up to 5% of your body weight in 6 months!

Research at the University of North Carolina has shown that overweight people who substituted sugary drinks with low calorie alternatives were twice as likely to lose 4 or 5 pounds than those who carried on consuming sugary drinks. The research which is due to be published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in March investigated the weight loss of 318 overweight people. Participants were divided into 3 groups. The first group of subjects substituted their high calorie drinks with diet drinks, the second group drank water instead of sugary soft drinks and the third didn’t change beverages, but were given general information regarding healthy weight loss strategies instead.

Subjects in both the first and second groups lost at least 5% of their body weight, so it seems that as long as sugary drinks are replaced with low calorie ones weight will be lost. Diet drinks suited people who craved sweet flavours or seek that caffeine fix, but there were additional benefits associated with drinking water rather than diet drinks such as better hydration and glucose levels. Furthermore, these benefits and weight loss in general are associated with the reduction of clinical risk factors associated with obesity such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

To help protect against such risks a more holistic approach to health can be adopted as recommended by your personal trainer. Personal trainers can design a diet plan as well as a bespoke regime suited to particular fitness levels. Exercise is a big contributing factor in maintaining a healthy weight, but has other advantages such as improving cognitive functioning and general feelings of wellbeing. It is the culmination of simple healthier habits that lead to improved fitness and this research is important because it shows that taking the simple first step of cutting out sugary drinks can have an enormously positive effect on health. Personal trainers will advise on how to enhance the benefits of this strategy through other healthy dietary options as well as a plan for exercising effectively, but even one change in diet can have a positive effect and it’s easy to sustain.

The first author of the study, Deborah Tate put forward the idea that if this simple strategy of consuming low calorie drinks was adopted on a national level then the problem of obesity could be tackled on a large scale. It would be so easy for governing bodies to promote the healthier option of replacing sugary drinks with low calorie alternatives, but this would mean counteracting the aggressive marketing strategies of companies who manufacture unhealthy food and beverages. Individuals can certainly take control in small ways and start living a more healthy life by losing calories in drinks.