Challenges, Quick-Fixes, Fad Diets and Lifestyles

I finished listening to the latest audio-book, “Lead the Field” by Earl Nightingale this morning as I returned back to the office from a client I train in the city. In the audio programme, he discusses a very powerful concept – the challenge, and the rewards that are brought about from a challenge. Although a self-help book, this is a very powerful philosophy that has a great degree of relevance to health and fitness. So, I thought that I would translate this concept to have relevance to this industry and add a few other concepts I have learnt from other books.

A challenge forces us to step outside our comfort zone and bring out the best in us. It requires us to “think” and really apply ourselves. By thinking, we learn and become creative. A challenge only brings about failure when we give up and brings about victory when we find a solution.

By embarking upon a challenge, say in this context, a health and fitness goal, it gives us a sense of direction. This gives us something to strive for, keeping us happy and motivated.

The real power of a challenge is when you finally achieve your goal – the reward and satisfaction that you achieve. For had you not set about this challenge (note, it’s a challenge – something to test yourself), you would not be able to appreciate the work involved to achieve this goal. You are now far wiser for having strived to achieve that goal with hard work, consistency and dedication.

Now, let’s assume that you wish to lose 50kg of weight. Which would you rather:

1. A pill that will make you lose the weight within a week (no, there isn’t such a thing, but it’s just an analogy).
2. Spending the time and effort to change your lifestyle, exercise and eat in a healthy fashion, taking a year to accomplish the goal.

Let’s consider both options.

Option 1: A pill (a magic one at that). Sure, you lose 50kg almost immediately. But what do you gain from this? What did you learn? How did you grow as a person?

The answer – nothing. Whilst you may improve your health by no longer being grossly overweight, you get absolutely NOTHING out of taking a pill. You stayed within your comfort zone and you’re exactly the same person, just 50kg lighter. In fact, without the reliance on this “pill”, you will revert back to your original weight in very little time because you are exactly the same as a week ago – your body just needs a little time to catch up.

Replace “pill” with “fad diet”. Now consider the logic behind fad dieting: no effort required, large amounts of weight loss. It seems idealistic until you realise that the non-existence of a challenge means that nothing is gained at all. The ability to appreciate the weight loss and sustain the weight loss is greatly undermined by the somewhat superficial focus on “fast and easy weight loss“.

This is unfortunately what results in yo-yo dieting. Many people lost vast amounts of weight in the short-term. But far fewer people can keep it off.

Now consider option 2. You spend the time to learn about yourself and find out what you can enjoy whilst making positive progress toward your goals. You set goals and achieve them. You put in the hard yards and earn your weight loss. You can therefore not only appreciate the effort involved in getting to your goal, but you are also a stronger person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. You have learnt about yourself on many levels – not just what you look like 50kg lighter.

Put in this context, whilst option 2 may take 52 times longer to achieve your goal weight, it still seems the more desirable option doesn’t it? I mean, you get so much more than “just” weight loss from option 2.

The irony is that with the majority of people, one year later, people who pursue option 1 would be unhappier (in themselves and their body), unhealthier and less motivated than option 2 pursuers.

But hey, it’s human nature to go for the short-term fix. So if you’ve done this in the past then that’s nothing to feel down or guilty about – it’s hardwired into our genetics. We all want instant results without the hard work! But having read this post, I hope that you can see that short-term “fixes” have very little credibility in the long-term. The hard work is where the true rewards lie.

Share on Facebook

Three Tips to Make Healthy Eating More Enjoyable

Eating in a healthy manner really has a negative stigma attached to it. I mean, who wants to eat carrot sticks when you could be going to your local hamburger joint and ordering the lot!

I am by no means a good cook, but there are some very simple tips that you could take on board to enhance the “enjoyability” of your nutritional regime.

Making Healthy Eating More Enjoyable Tip #1: Use Healthy Sauces!

Sauce!? Healthy eating requires you to eat bare meats and veggies doesn’t it? Well, not quite. Sure, it’s ideal to cut out the creamy and fatty sauces, but why not opt for a tomato based sauce? You’d be surprised how low in calories a healthy bolognaise sauce can be!

Plus, check out the ingredients in salsa. There is often a little sugar added, but it’s primarily tomato, capsicum and spices – which is actually quite healthy for you. Better yet – make your own so it’s all fresh and tasty!

Low-fat dressings are also a great compliment to salads. Avoid using the really fatty dressings to excess, because they can really increase your daily caloric intake.

Making Healthy Eating More Enjoyable Tip #2: Use Variety in Your Cooking

Don’t eat canned tuna, muesli and steamed veggies all day, every day. Mix it up.

Try having a wholegrain burrito with lean mince, salad and low-fat cheese with salsa. Then, give a stir-fry a go with an oyster sauce, chicken and vegetables. For your next dinner, have a hamburger with wholegrain toast, a lean beef patty and salad (with a bit of sauce). You could also have a roast dinner with beef and vegetables. Or what about grilled salmon and a salad with low-fat dressing?

The possibilities are endless. It is important to eat a wide variety of food, not only for your general health and well-being, but your ability to sustain a healthy approach to eating in the long-term.

Making Healthy Eating More Enjoyable Tip #3: Treat Yourself

It doesn’t hurt to have a treat every once in a while. In fact, I believe that treating yourself is healthy from a psychological standpoint. After all, “healthy” extends far beyond the nutritional components contained within food! It is by no means healthy to spend half the day thinking about that chocolate that you just cannot have!

The key is to watch what junk food you consume. You may be the type of person who really doesn’t need junk food – so don’t have it! But if you really enjoy a drink every now and then, or treating yourself to some sweets, enjoy them on the odd occasion. If you can control the amount of “treats” that you consume, then you would have obtained a great balance between your lifestyle and eating in a healthy manner.

Share on Facebook

Fad Dieting: The Long Road to Weight Loss

Something that I have written about extensively is fad dieting. Fad dieting involves going on a highly restrictive diet for a short period of time in order to achieve massive amounts of weight loss.

Fad diets come in all shapes and sizes. There are protein shake diets, vegetable diets, soup diets, straw diets, liquid diets, fruit diets, “straw” diets and so on. A fad diet is basically something that gives a quick result for minimal effort. Well, so it seems.

If you have ever been guilty of yo-yo dieting, then you will know that fad dieting just doesn’t work. You may lose some initial weight, but, because the diet is not sustainable (or even healthy for that matter), you stop the diet, revert back to your old eating habits and gain all the weight back.

By approaching weight loss in this fashion, you are effectively aiming to achieve the end result without learning new lifestyle habits. In most cases, this frankly doesn’t work, because one’s ability to sustain these weight loss results is developed in the “journey” toward weight loss. This journey is where you learn how to establish healthy eating and exercise habits that can be sustained in the long-term.

In essence, fad dieting is the long road to weight loss because the vast majority of people embarking on a fad diet fail. What may initially seem like a quick fix, often turns out to be wasted time, money and effort. Whilst it’s human nature to opt for the quick and easy way out, achieving phenomenal and sustainable results require much more than this.

Ultimately, there is no shortcut. You and only you can put in the work to change your life in the long-term. Put bluntly, the sooner you realise this first-hand, the quicker you will achieve your goals and stop wasting your time with the latest diet craze.

Share on Facebook

Protein Powder Without Artificial Sweeteners

It wasn’t long ago that I was discussing my supplement regime with another fitness professional, whereby I explained that I was using Optimum Nutrition 100% Protein Powder because it was a high quality protein powder, which tasted great and was really good value for money.

We moved onto the topic of artificial sweeteners and I explained that, whilst I would prefer not to consume artificial sweeteners, I haven’t come across a good protein powder without artificial sweeteners. Fortunately, I recently discovered an amazing product called Dymatize All Natural Elite Whey which contains nothing artificial!

Today, I tasted the product and was pleasantly surprised that it tasted quite good. So, I was inspired to blog about it and possibly even write up a full review shortly.

So anyway, let’s briefly discuss artificial sweeteners. Do they cause cancer? Are they going to make you sick? Are they any good for you?

The thing is, there is currently no conclusive evidence to prove that they are “bad” for you in any way, shape or form. Sure, one study may come to this conclusion, yet another one may conclude otherwise. There really is no hard evidence. Plus, Australia is one of the strictest countries in the world when it comes to the foods that are available for consumption, so anything on the market that could even be a potential risk would be immediately removed!

Now I do believe that artificial sweeteners can be a great tool when trying to limit the calories that you consume. Personally, during my BodyBlitz Challenge, I did consume a number of artificially sweetened products (apart from protein powders) in order to overcome sugar cravings. Sugar is a highly addictive substance, so you need every tool at your disposal to overcome such an addiction!

Additionally, if you desperately need to lose weight for health reasons, then using artificial sweeteners to replace highly refined carbohydrates may be a viable approach for you, at least in the short-term.

Having said all this, artificial sweeteners aren’t “good” for you either. There is a question mark as to whether or not they are “bad”, but they certainly have no nutritional value. So, this is precisely my rationale as to why I converted to the Dymatize All Natural Elite Whey Protein Powder. I have to be honest, whilst it tastes good, it doesn’t taste as “great” as the Optimum.  Yet, I would much rather eliminate the artificial sweeteners from my protein powder because it just isn’t necessary in my particular circumstances.

Of course, we have have a range of protein powder supplements in our online supplement store for you to choose from!

Share on Facebook

The Glycemic Index Explained

Not long ago, we received some pamphlets in the mailbox from the Australian GI Institute to distribute. So this has prompted me to blog on this very important topic – the glycemic index explained.

The Glycemic Index (or GI) rates various foods on how quickly their carbohydrate component is broken down and absorbed into the body. Whilst the “actual” time will vary from person to person, this scale allows us to compare foods in a relative fashion. In other words, one food may be quicker or slower absorbing than other foods.

The scale ranges from 0-100, with glucose having a GI of 100. There are actually a few simple sugars that are absorbed quicker than glucose and they subsequently have a GI of greater than 100.

The GI index is broken down into three categories:

• LOW GI: 55 or less
• MEDIUM GI: 56-69
• HIGH GI: 70 or more

What’s important to note here is that the higher the GI, the faster the carbohydrate will be absorbed into your body. Whilst this has serious ramifications for diabetics, let’s focus on fat loss and gain (considering this is a general health and fitness blog). In order to lose fat, under normal circumstances, it is highly advantageous to consume LOW Glycemic Index foods which take 2-3 hours to absorb (as opposed to high GI which take about an hour). Why? Well this is how I explain it to my clients:

Imagine you have a funnel and are pouring water into it. If you pour the water in slowly, all the water will go through the funnel without spillage. However, if you speed the pouring process up, water will spill over the edge because you are pouring in too much water for the funnel to handle at any one time. The same is true for our bodies. Our body (the funnel) can only handle so many carbohydrates (the water) at any one time. If you pour in too many carbohydrates simultaneously, your blood sugar levels soar, insulin is secreted and all these additional calories overflow, contributing to fat gain.

You can see here that with GI, we are considering the rate of carbohydrate absorption, not the amount of carbohydrate. When rested, your body is far more equipped to handle 50g of carbohydrate over 3 hours than 50g of carbohydrate in 1 hour.

Following an intense workout, you may need additional carbohydrates to facilitate recovery. Carbohydrates are a nutrient and are vital for muscle repair. So it is generally recommended that you consume HIGH GI foods within 2 hours of your workout because that’s when you need a sudden surge of carbs. During the remainder of the day, try to keep your food’s glycemic index relatively low as a general rule.

In our free course, “Conquering Your Body“, we discuss glycemic index in far more detail. We talk about sugars and complex carbs and how GI ties in with it all. If you’re interested in finding out more, I strongly suggest that you sign up!

Plus, be sure to utilise our Food Nutritional Information database where we store a number of foods and their corresponding Glycemic Index.

Share on Facebook

Three Tips to Recover Effectively from Exercise

I quite enjoy writing the “three tip” blog posts, so I’m going to continue writing up three quick tips on various topics. I hope you get something out of them too!

Recovery is imperative to obtaining results – whether you are seeking to lose weight, gain muscle or enhance your fitness.  Exercise does not result in progress, recovering from exercise does. If you would like to read more on this topic, then I strongly suggest that you sign up to our free “Conquering Your Body” course. Furthermore, search up “recovery” on this website and you’ll be hit with a number of articles explaining this concept in more detail.

So, how do we maximise recovery? There are numerous ways to enhance the quality of your recovery outside of the gym. Here are three really important considerations:

Recovering Effective from Exercise Tip 1: Obtain 7-8 Hours of Quality Sleep

Sleep is the time in which your body recuperates. When you are exercising, you place an even heavier reliance on high quality sleep than would normally be. During sleep, your body repairs itself. Vital hormones are secreted which facilitate this recovery process and without sleep, these hormones are unable to get to work. No matter what your health and fitness goal, you NEED to obtain quality sleep!

7-8 hours is the general recommendation for sleep. Too little or too much sleep can have detrimental effects on your results, health and energy.

Recovering Effective from Exercise Tip 2: Establish a Nutritional Regime to Promote Recovery

This is quite a complex topic and one that I’m not going to delve into within this blog post (the “Conquering Your Body” course goes into a fair amount of detail on this topic). In essence, nutrition provides your body with the raw materials needed to repair damaged cells. You need to ensure that you consume the appropriate nutrients, in the appropriate portions, at the optimal time to encourage maximum recovery.

If you train intensely, an appropriate nutritional regime may incorporate various supplements, a pre and/or post workout meal and an increased caloric intake immediately after your workout to accomodate for your body’s increased nutrient requirement. But don’t forget about the other 22 hours in the day – you always need to ensure that you are eating effectively and healthily!

Recovering Effective from Exercise Tip 3: Don’t Overdo the Exercise

More exercise is NOT necessarily better! Too much exercise can result in the inhibition of your results and the undoing of all your hard work! This is what professionals refer to as “overtraining syndrome”, whereby you are more prone to such things as:

• Fat gain
• Muscle Loss
• Fitness regression
• Moodiness
• Poor appetite
• Poor sleep
• Hormonal imbalance
• Medical complications

Overtraining syndrome occurs when you perform so much exercise that your body does not have a chance to recuperate from it! Remember, exercise is physical stress and your body needs to recover from it. Too much exercise and you will be wasting your time.

Share on Facebook

Why Detox Diets Can Be Dangerous

Yesterday, we published a fairly comprehensive article on the dangers of detox diets, entitled “Detox Diet Dangers & Health Risks“. Within this article, there is some really important information as to why detox diets can be dangerous to your health and well being, contrary to what is purported within the advertising campaigns of such diets.

Generally, detox diets rely on the removal of many foods from your dietary intake for a limited period of time. There are many variations available on the market, as is explained within the article.

A detox diet seems to make sense on the surface; you’ve been eating garbage for a long time and you need to cleanse your body to rid yourself from the build-up of toxins over the years. But what you may not be aware of is that your body already has highly intricate detoxification systems present that do all this work for you! Now, that’s not to say that you can eat all the garbage in the world and your body will automatically cleanse itself. Eventually, after enough abuse, your body will begin to struggle to detoxify itself and this is when medical complications inevitably arise.

The fact that your body already does the detoxification work for you, in my opinion, renders these detox diets practically useless. In fact, I believe that they can be quite harmful because they starve your body of vital nutrients that are imperative for the normal functioning of the human body.

A good point is raised within the article that detox diets, whilst potentially dangerous, can assist some people in developing healthier lifestyle habits after the diet has ended. Allow me to clarify – a detox diet in my opinion is not a healthy lifestyle habit. A healthy approach to your lifestyle includes a well balanced diet and consistent exercise.

Now guess what the best detox diet is (without actually being a detox diet) – eating a well balanced diet and exercising regularly. You don’t need to “wash out” your body – your body does that for you. Your body can cleanse itself far more effectively by providing it with essential nutrients than by starving it for a short period of time.

If I haven’t convinced you to scrap the idea of a detox diet, please have a read of the article Detox Diet Dangers & Health Risks. And if you’re still not convinced, please drop us a line and I’ll be more than happy to discuss this topic with you.

Share on Facebook

Running Versus Walking – Which is Best for Weight Loss?

When I was young (we’re talking about 5 years of age), I remember being told that the best possible exercise was walking because you could exercise indefinitely. Not long after, I was also told that it’s not “exercise” if you don’t break a sweat. So here I was quite confused and thinking that the best way to exercise is to walk in the heat!

Nowadays, I fortunately have a much clearer understanding of the benefits to both walking and running, so I thought I’d share some information on which is more effective when trying to achieve a weight loss goal.

Walking

By walking, I am referring to a relatively low intensity exercise and not full-on power-walking up hills. Walking is one way to incorporate additional calorie expenditure into your day, which is important when seeking to lose weight. Walking can also be a much safer mode of exercise if you are injured, elderly, at risk medically or have joint problems.

Due to the low intensity nature of walking, you are able to extend the duration of this type of exercise. However, walking at a comfortable pace will have a negligible effect on fitness for the average person. It is okay to expend calories, but that’s about it.

With all this taken into consideration, a low intensity walk can be integrated into nearly any one’s plan to facilitate recovery in between more intense workouts.

Running

Running is a much higher intensity format of exercise. Because of the additional effort required, far more calories are expended within a given time and thus, weight loss will be encouraged more so than walking.

In regards to your fitness, running will have a significant impact on your level of fitness because you are stressing the body and forcing it to condition to these stressful conditions.

However, there can be some drawbacks to the high impact nature of running. Issues such as tendonitis in the lower body, arthritis and injuries (ankle, knees, hips, lumbar spine) can certainly limit your ability to run in a safe manner. Also, if you do have present medical considerations (severe asthma, poor cardiovascular health etc.) you may be unable to undertake a programme that incorporates running.

The high impact nature of running not only limits the percentage of population that can participate in this mode of exercise, but it also inhibits hypertrophy (or muscle building). If your goal is to build a significant amounts muscle, you may consider other low-impact forms of exercise such as using a bike, cross-trainer, rower etc. The high impact nature of running can cause damage along the z-discs of muscle fibres and thus inhibit the degree of muscle growth experienced in the lower body.

–

As you can see, there running or walking isn’t necessarily “better” for weight loss. They are both formats of exercise that can be beneficial to you, depending upon your specific goals, history, lifestyle etc.

Share on Facebook

Reassessing Your Fitness Goals

I have been on a bulk programme for a few months now and have seen some great progress over the cooler period of the year. Initially, my plan was to continue on the bulk plan until August. But things don’t always go to plan.

Over the past few months, whilst I have seen some excellent progress strength and muscle mass wise, the amount of fat tissue that I am carrying. It’s increased to the point at which I am now in the mid-teens with my body fat percentage and am unwilling to go any higher just to continue on a bulk plan for one more month. Admittedly, I’m still within the “normal” range for my bodyfat, but in all honesty, I like a bit more room in the legs of my pants (normal bodyfat + larger than average quadriceps and hamstrings = tighter pants!)

Now my goal is to reduce my body fat fairly gradually to around 10% whilst maintaining muscle mass (as a minimum). Upon reaching this goal, I will re-assess and decide where to go from there.

Something that I want to stress is that your goals will change as you make progress. In my case, I am uncomfortable with my current body fat levels so I’m ditching the “full-on bulk” and opting for a fat loss programme in the short/mid-term. Whilst your long-term goals may remain the same, the short-term goals may vary from time to time and it is important to assess your progress, and then reassess your fitness goals.

Having said this, it is important to have a long-term goal which provides a clear sense of direction. Whilst this may change slightly from time to time, try not to change it often. By continually dramatically changing your long-term goal, you are effectively changing direction to the point where you become so confused you don’t know where you’re headed!

Share on Facebook

Measuring Your Weight Loss Progress

If you’re seeking to lose weight, it is important that you regularly assess your progress. If you’re exercising and eating in a healthy manner, that’s great! But, you also need to know whether or not your efforts are paying off and if you are closing in on your weight loss goal.

It can be hard, especially when you are starting to approach a weight loss goal, to get into a routine of measuring your weight loss progress. I cannot count the number of clients that have cringed when I have advised them that we would undertake a body assessment. This is often because they had not stepped on the scales in an extremely long time and had no idea how much weight they actually had to lose.

As hard as it is, it is imperative that you do obtain some initial figures by at least weighing yourself and taking some circumference measurements (eg. waist, hips, chest, thighs etc.) as initial benchmark figures. Then, on a regular basis, re-take these figures so you can ascertain whether or not your approach to nutrition and exercise is working.

Here’s a common trap that many people fall into:

Just because you are eating in a more healthy fashion and exercising more does NOT mean you will lose weight.

Weight loss is more a function of the balance of your calories IN versus calories OUT. You could very easily consume far more calories through a healthy diet by consuming larger portion sizes, or foods of higher calorie density, for example. Sure, you will do your body a world of good by avoiding processed foods, but you will not necessarily lose weight.

Of course, if your approach to weight loss isn’t working, then you will need to modify your approach. But at least you can do so based on some objective facts obtained from your regular measurements. This is far more desirable than relying on how you look in the mirror, as this can be highly subjective based on your perception of yourself, mood, lighting etc.

With our online personal training services, we provide guidelines to follow for taking regular and reliable measurements. However, we do also undertake highly comprehensive full-body assessments to understand your body in far more detail than just weight and measurements.

Share on Facebook