How to improve your running
03 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogs from other people, Exercise and Fitness Tags: Charles Poliquin, diet, Eating, High-protein diet, Muscle, Physical exercise, strength training
In case you haven’t noticed I think Charles Poliquin is pretty amazing; he talks a great deal of sense. his blogs are always informative and packed full of research and as soon as I can get on one of his courses the better!
Anyway, rather than make this post in praise of him; its probably better that I let him speak for himself Charles Poliquin.
A really long article but if running is important to you, stick with it – it may just improve your time, technique, stamina etc.
Have a happy Sunday!
x
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Top tips to lose weight
02 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogs from other people, Exercise and Fitness, Information Tags: Charles Poliquin, diet, Eating, fitness, Health, High-protein diet, strength training, weight loss
We all want to lose weight, and a large number of my clients want to lose it from one place in particular – their waists, stomach, midsection, abs, stomach – call it what you will it amounts to the same thing. It’s the area that weight always seems to settle and the older you get the harder it seems to shift!
So reading Charles Poliquin’s Blog yesterday he was focussing on the best ways to reduce or eliminate fat from this area in particular but, lets face it, if you are eating well and moving more the benefits are going to be felt (and seen) all over your body. With all of that in mind what then are the top tips to shape up?
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The 10 Things Fitness Magazines Don’t Tell You
01 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogs from other people, Exercise and Fitness, Information Tags: diet, Eating, Health, Livestrong, weight loss
I love having the time and space to be able to catch up on some reading and being able to read some of the great articles and websites 
people have sent me. Here is one such interesting article from the team over at Livestrong.
I love this bit which is something that those of us who want to lose weight would all do well to remember “You need to find a plan that you can sustain. One that keeps you happy, works for your schedule and life, and is sustainable”
“….too many people are either looking for a quick 4-week fix (doesn’t exist), or the one solution that will solve everyone’s problems. Not going to happen…..”
All in all an interesting article, let me know what you think?
OMG I am actually human!
27 May 2012 2 Comments
in My Training Updates Tags: diet, dieting, Eating, exhaustion, Health, Mindless Eating, relaxing, stress
Its been a really difficult week and I guess if I am honest, there has been a lot of stuff going on in my head for the last few weeks and I think things have finally got a bit too much for me. So, time to take a bit of time away from some of my self-imposed stresses, time to rest, think, sleep and cry!
Today is the first time I have posted for a week and this is the first time I could even begin to think outwards instead of inwards; I have spent so much time the last few days just resting and trying to understand what I feel and why. I have been, and still am, completely physically and mentally exhausted, it seems that despite my careful planning and all my “I’m fine” the stresses were effecting my body and my mind far more that I realised. I am glad I got all the exams, the studying done, glad I have experienced everything I have but perhaps in hindsight I should have staggered my commitments a little more and allowed myself a little more time to stay on top on family stuff.
But what have I learnt? How has it all affected my body, my health, my mind? What lessons are there I can take from all of this?
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Weird diet plans
26 Apr 2012 4 Comments
in My Training Updates Tags: Calorie, Calorie restriction, diet, Diets, Eating, Food faddism, Health, Healthy diet, Very-low-calorie diet, weight loss
It never ceases to amaze me how many people have strange ideas of what constitutes a healthy diet or views on what they should eat to
lose weight…..the weirdest one around me at the moment is the idea that putting a sheet of gelatin in a cup of tea will provide all the nutrients needed and will help to lose weight!
Over the years I have heard so many of these from the juice only diet, the 7-in-7 diet, very low-calorie diets and the common factors in very single one is
- they didn’t work
- people lasted about three days before giving up and then hating themselves for failing
Part of the problem, as we all know, are the digitally enhanced images making the before pictures look worse and the after pictures look better. Combined with a sensationalist spin that makes people believe that they don’t need to do ANYTHING ELSE, that this diet is a magic bullet that will fix years of overeating, and people are sucked into wanting to belive it will work, that this time it will be different…. Everyone forgets that they didn’t just put the weight on overnight, it took months or years to gain the weight and it will take at least the same amount of time to lose it.
The diet and media industries have played on people’s insecurities, weakness and self-esteem issues for years and have a vested interest in maintaining the belief that fad diets work – after all its a multi million dollar industry making large corporations huge amounts of profits. The latest news in the UK is that Weight Watchers are to open a chain of high street shops – hmm are they doing that out of some altruistic thought process? I think not.
The thing that intrigues me is the thought processes people go through to convince themselves that the gelatin diet, or the cabbage soup diet etc actually work and how they equate that with what they really know and understand about food, nutrition and what they actually eat. It’s all very well convincing yourself that gelatin is the best thing ever but if you are still consuming vast quantities of processed foods and doing no exercise at all, surely somewhere deep inside there must be a recognition that it can’t possibly work?
Or are diets just a triumph of hope over experience?!
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Food Trends…..What’s In, What’s Out
21 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Diet and Nutrition, My Training Updates Tags: Beef, Charles Poliquin, Convenience food, diet, Eating, Fat, food, Free range, Meat, nutrition, Organic food
On the back of yesterday’s post on Food, Nutrition and Diets I thought I would look a bit further and came across my old favourite Charles Poliquin who has mulled over the concept of food trends
Interesting to read another voice advocating eating good quality protein etc. Having recently discovered the taste difference in grass-fed beef, on that basis alone for me, it a clear win for grass-fed but I do know and accept that the cost differential for most people is sufficient to prevent them from eating grass-fed all of the time. To be honest in these straightened times it would be difficult for me to push eating organic foods, free range, grass-fed etc as I know that despite the taste and health benefits when it comes to feeding your family some principles have to be compromised.
But where possible, eat organic, or grass-fed – the taste is so much better, the welfare of the animals is considered and the positive impact on your health and well-being shouldn’t be underestimated.
Despite everything we THINK we know, not all fats are bad and all healthy diets should include an element of fat. Fat make us feel full, a reasonable amount of good fats in a diet ensures we feel satiated after every meal and a mixed, balanced diet will provide the nutrients to ensure we don’t constantly eat or crave junk.
I agree with Poliquin’s comments about eating foods that are in season, its something I have been saying for ages. Apart from the 
health benefits we should know where our foods come from, we should be aware of the environmental impact of shipping our vegetables half way round the world and the chemicals that have to be sprayed onto them to keep them looking appetising when they land at our local supermarket.
His comments on processed foods echo my post – as far as I am concerned we should all be avoiding as much processed food as possible. How can we expect to be healthy or to lose weight when we constantly cram processed and chemically enhanced foodstuff into our bodies? There really is a link between what we eat and how we look and feel.
And as for the suggested carb revival – do people still really believe that carbs are good for you? Oh yes, I forgot even our own government promotes a healthy diet as one that is based on starchy carbs including brad ad potatoes…..and gets away with it!
To reiterate what I said yesterday; eat the best quality real food you can afford, eat a balanced varied diet, avoid processed foods, toxins and grains.
Time to get off my soap box I think….!
Related articles
- Grocery Guide: Buying meat (nathanwjackson.wordpress.com)
- Why Grass-fed Beef Costs More and is worth it! (gauchoranchgrillboutique.wordpress.com)
- Isn’t All Grass Fed Beef the Same? (livingbeyondorganicmom.wordpress.com)
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Why I could never be a vegetarian!
15 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in My Training Updates Tags: Beef, Eating, food, Laverstoke Park Farm, Meat, protein, Steak, Sunday roast, Vegetarianism
I love meat - right from the start lets just nail my colours to the mast. I have always enjoyed meat, my family are meat eaters (my 
brother briefly flirted with being a vegetarian for a couple of year but he came back to the fold!) and my children both love meat!
Long before I started trying to eat healthily or getting fit meat was always a staple part of my diet but, in reality it probably consisted mainly of chicken and the odd piece of beef when my parents cooked a roast dinner. I was never that keen on steak – I would always have salmon rather than steak – and whilst I have always enjoyed meat, a full varied meat-eating diet wasnt a high priority. To be honest, I was kind of sick of the sight of chicken we had it so often!
So, when I tried to eat healthily, my protein consumption from animals was pretty poor at around 40g per day and I was eating dairy and a few nuts to try and compensate. When I upped my protein intake to around 80-100g per day and started HAVING to eat protein at every meal I rediscovered my passion for meat and now I am a complete convert – given a choice I would rather have a nice hunk of beef than almost anything else.
This week I took the levels of yumminess from ordinary standard beef to another level when I discovered some fantastic grass-fed beef; there is a farm near my parents called Laverstoke Park Farm which sells the most amazing grass-fed beef but also sells free range organic pork, lamb and chicken and I am completely hooked!
The steak I had on Friday from there was probably the best, tastiest, piece of beef I have ever eaten and knowing how well the animals are looked after, how much care goes into the production of organic, grass-fed beef just makes it taste even better. I also bought an organic free range chicken as well and in all honestly it looks nothing like the bland anaemic looking birds you see in the local supermarket – just writing this is making my mouth water!
Meat in general is now centre stage in my diet and I probably eat steak at least three times a week (usually for breakfast); I love the protein hit I get from a good piece of beef and I am slowly widening the variety of meats I eat – saying that, I just can’t stand the taste of roast pork so that will not be making a reappearance, yuk!!
One of the reasons behind my newly discovered passion is that the more I learn about food, health, diets etc, the more I understand 
that the foods we should be eating are the ones that are unadulterated and the ones that we genetically evolved to consume. Part of our evolution did not involve eating white bread or grains (they are relatively recent additions to out diet) but we developed to eat meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts and berries and they should form the cornerstone of our diet. We evolved to be able to run at a high intensity for brief amounts of time, to run slowly or walk for great distances and to be able to handle periods of intermittent fasting or no food.
All of which is about a million miles from the average western diet which is packed full of highly processed foods, steeped in sugar, preservatives and chemicals, with little or no actual nutrition – combined with a highly sedentary lifestyle it really is no wonder that we have such an epidemic of obesity sweeping the western world.
Rant over (for now) off to go and enjoy a nice buffalo steak and some salad!
So what is a healthy diet?
06 Apr 2012 2 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition Tags: Calorie, diet, diet plans, Eating, food, Health, weight loss
There is so much advice pushed out by the media every day telling us what we should eat, whats bad for us and why our food choices
will make us thin or fat! So what is the truth?
If you take every diet plan, piece of government advice or lobby group and try to find a consensus you will be sadly disappointed – everything you read contradicts everything else from government advice telling you that your diet should be based around starchy carbs to the paleo lobby asserting that all grains are bad. To be honest, whatever you WANT to believe you will find someone prepared to promote it as the next best weight loss plan and lets face it will all know an equal number of people who say that Atkins / Dukan / Weight Watchers / Lighter Life is the best thing ever and the worst invention known to man!
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Healthy eating, information overload and confusion!
12 Mar 2012 3 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition Tags: Biggest Loser, dieting, Eating, Health, healthy eating, Obesity, Physical exercise, protein, weight loss
I’ve been thinking more and more lately about healthy eating, diets and weight loss, the information overload we are all exposed to and the 
continual exploitation by the media of people’s worries, fears and insecurities.
Watching a late night repeat of a Biggest Loser winner who had put most of his weight back on and has now lost it again reminded me of all the things I dislike so intensely about that programme and others in a similar vein (the USA version of Obese a Year to Save my Life being another), namely that anyone can lose weight in a severely restricted, controlled environment – in fact it would be hard NOT to lose weight when you have to completely suspend your real life and your decisions about food and exercise are completely taken away from you. The hard part is always losing weight or maintaining the loss whilst living a normal life, making everyday family decisions over food and dealing with normal life stress.
My complaint has always been that programmes like this and magazines publishing some z-list celebrity weight loss story only ever tell half a story and an airbrushed, edited, highly selective story at that. They simply don’t provide people with the real knowledge to make healthy choices and healthy decisions. So, what happens? People expect to lose weight overnight and are disappointed and demoralised when they don’t and those that do, often lose the weight on a restrictive diet and are surprised that it all goes back on again when they resort to their old eating habits.
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Steak, chicken or salmon for breakfast?
20 Feb 2012 3 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition, My Training Updates Tags: Breakfast, chicken, Clean and Lean Cookbook, diet, Eating, fitness, healthy eating plan, James Duigan, protein, salmon, Scrambled eggs, Steak
At the beginning of my diet, health and fitness search I wouldn’t eat breakfast at all thinking that I was saving calories and convinced that I ate less overall by not eating first thing. The days when I did actually manage to eat breakfast were when I had been awake for hours and breakfast would usually consist of yet another cup of coffee accompanied by (on a good day porridge with butter and sugar) or on a bad day white toast, crumpets or something similar. Always followed up a couple of hours later by something sweet and hoping I could just get through until lunch!
A very early change to my diet was getting my head around the concept of eating breakfast (a) at all and (b) within an hour of waking up both of which were a real challenge to the way I thought about food. I have been slowly changing my diet over the last year and trying to get better at eating clean – I never ate lots of processed food or ready meals but the culprits for me were flour (in anything from bread to pasta), white rice, potatoes and obviously sugary stuff.
