Advice and Tips

Resistance training is all too often overlooked by people trying to get fit or lose weight, in favour of long cardio sessions, but resistance really is the key to creating a fit and healthy body.

1lb of muscle burns 30-50 calories per day, while 1lb of fat only burns about 9 calories per day. The more muscle your body contains the more calories you burn each day. This is one of the reasons that resistance training is such a vital part of any successful fat-loss programme – it supercharges your metabolism both in the short term (by making the muscles you already have burn even more calories) and in the long term (by increasing the amount of muscle you have).

Long duration cardio, on the other hand, can actually reduce your muscle mass! And it only burns calories while you are doing it, whereas resistance training causes you to burn calories for hours after the session has finished.

Resistance training, correctly applied, will ensure you have a balanced, strong and functional body. Repetitive cardio activities can actually worsen or create imbalances, so if you are a regular runner / cyclist etc. you need resistance training to balance everything out!

Resistance training has been called ‘the fountain of youth’ – and it really is. A recent study showed that when subjects engaged in resistance training their strength increased by over 20% and their genes literally ‘reverted back’ to the same markers as ‘younger’ genes after only six months! Also, when the older folks in the study began, they were almost 60% weaker than the younger members of the study. In just six months, they were only 38% weaker.

For maximum effect, perform compound exercises that use the largest muscles and more than one muscle group at a time (squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows, press ups and pull ups). This works your body as a unit which is more functional than isolating specific muscles, and also means you burn more calories in less time!

Resistance can be your bodyweight – in fact most women in the gym will use dumbbells that are FAR too light to get a result, and doing bodyweight versions can provide more resistance!  Single leg versions of things like squats and deadlifts up the load significantly.

You can’t ‘spot reduce’ fat – no amount of crunches will show the 6 pack beneath the flab – so the more of your body you work, the more fat you burn all over: the real secret to revealing those abs!

For more fat loss, fitness, health and nutrition secrets make sure you sign up to the mailing list!

Exercise gets quite a bit of bad press, in my view! Of course we are all told we need to do it, and plenty of it, but rather than seeing it as something we want to fit into our lives for pleasure, this can often make us feel like it’s an arduous task that we really don’t want to do, but have to. Maybe it’s the word ‘exercise’ and its association with school work?

Really, what we all need to be doing is getting more active. This doesn’t mean driving to the gym and jumping on a cross trainer to plod away for endless minutes, but means moving more on a regular basis, throughout the day and building movement into the fabric of life. Don’t beat yourself up if family commitments mean you can’t get to the gym – instead go for a long brisk walk or a bike ride as a family, or play games in the garden.

Perhaps you could take up an active sport: surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, kayaking, football, martial arts, stand-up paddle surfing – there are so many things out there to get involved in and it’s never too late! If you find yourself saying ‘yes, but…’ to ideas, finding reasons not to get involved in anything, try to re-phrase your thinking to ‘yes, and (that sounds fun, I wonder where we can do it)’. There are so many activities out there and it’s a great way to spend quality time with other people while getting fit at the same time.

As for sneaking activity into your daily life, you have certainly heard it all before, but you really must put it into action – have a policy that you never get in a lift but always take the stairs, for example.

I used to do this when I worked with a guy who had the opposite policy of never taking the stairs. Instead of sit-down meetings, we would grab a coffee and go for a walk around (while he smoked a cigarette, but I least I got him walking!). When we got back into the building, however, he would refuse to get the stairs, so we’d meet back upstairs instead – and of course I invariably got there first.

It also used to drive me mad when I heard people in the office going on about ‘going to the gym 3 times a week’ but then seeing them get in the lift every time! They would be the ones who had also used that gym visit to justify an extra-large lunch or an afternoon snack.

‘Going to the gym’ is not necessarily equivalent to actually doing anything useful when you get there and it can be a great excuse to ‘take it easy’ for the rest of the day. Most people will get more of a fitness benefit from going up the stairs a few times a day than ‘cruising’ on a machine at the gym, while watching TV or reading a magazine then slobbing out or eating more because they have ‘earned it’.

Don’t let yourself believe exercise is something hateful you have to do. Look for all the reasons why getting active will make you feel good and then choose to exercise because you want to. Make sure you choose things that are worthwhile and fun – if you can combine a walk with a meeting or spending time with family you are getting more out of your time than if you do that at a gym, staring mindlessly at a TV screen. Keep the focus on activity and movement and use your exercise sessions at the gym for quality exercise, not just passing the time!

For more fat loss, fitness, health and nutrition secrets make sure you sign up to the mailing list!

For more fat loss, fitness, health and nutrition secrets make sure you sign up to the mailing list!

Goal setting is vital for increasing your chances of success. The people who don’t take this step are the ones who will get stuck into an exercise programme or a new diet, will give it all their attention for a short period of time, then let it fall by the wayside before it’s had a chance to work.

Goals help steer you through the rough patches: when you wake up feeling a bit tired and think ‘I can’t be bothered to train’, it is all to easy to hit the snooze button. However, if you have set yourself short, medium and long term goals, today’s behaviour becomes part of a bigger picture, and the consequences of not getting up are harder to ignore. If you have a short term goal, such as ‘I will train 3 times this week’ that is linked to an outcome that you truly want, such as ‘losing 5lb of body fat’ or a longer term goal, such as ‘I will run the Race for Life in 3 months time’ then the single training session is no longer an isolated event that can be missed out. It becomes part of a chain of events that will take you, step-by-step, to your ultimate goals.

You should set yourself compelling goals, that you actually want to achieve. A lot has been said on keeping your goals SMART:

Specific:

‘I will lose 6lb’ rather than ‘I want to lose a bit of weight’. A word of caution here, however. We should focus on our ‘sphere of influence’ – the things we have direct control over. We have control over the actions we take – so training regularly and eating right – but the actual amount of weight / fat we lose is actually not within our direct control. It is an outcome of our behaviour, so we should focus the goals on the behaviours that are required, in order to achieve the desired outcome. So a goal of: ‘exercising with my trainer 3 times per week, walking for 30 minutes 3 times per week and eating according to my diet plan for the next 6 weeks’ is a goal we have direct control over.

Take measurements (and photos!) on day one and remeasure regularly to track progress. If you’re not moving in the right direction then you need to change your methods – looking at your exercise and nutrition more closely. If you are building up your running then ensure you know the distances you are running and the time it is taking – I have a GPS that I take with me when training clients so we know exactly how far and how fast!

Measurable:

Aiming too high can be demotivating: if you have never run before, then a marathon in 3 months time is not the best idea, but a 5km might be! Aim for 1lb a week fat loss, rather than 10lb in a fortnight – you may lose quicker, in which case you can always revise the goals later. But on the other hand, do aim high enough. It can be hard to imagine that losing a stone is possible, but it is, and in theory should take no more than 14 weeks on the 1lb a week timescale – if you ensure goals are broken down into shorter term goals you can see how it can be achievable.

Achievable:

Setting unrealistic goals can be counter-productive – some people do this as it offers them an excuse to fail with a bit of dignity intact, whereas if you fail to achieve a more realistic goal you will feel more of a failure. Counter-productive, of course, and if you follow good goal-getting methods and take action on your goals you don’t need to worry about failing as it won’t happen!

Realistic:

However, sometimes you truly have to ‘dare to dream’ and keep a long term goal in mind that might seem totally unrealistic at the moment. So long as you are achieving short term goals and taking things step by step you will be getting closer to this ‘crazy dream’ and you just might well make it a reality.

Visualisation is important too – regularly imagining yourself having achieved your goals is a very powerful tool indeed! How does it feel in your new body? How much do you now love ‘bikini-time’? A daily day-dream of how life will be when you achieve your goals tricks your mind into thinking it has already happened, and makes getting there much easier!

But remember also to appreciate yourself as you are – focus on your good points and let your visualisation include these: for example how great it is that your thighs are more toned because you can finally show off your tiny waist in a bikini. Your nutrition and exercise plan is all part of truly making the best of yourself: adding lean muscle and shedding excess body fat, improving your posture and increasing your energy. There is no need to compare yourself against unrealistic (and probably airbrushed) targets as it’s all within you, waiting to come out!

Time-Bound:

Give yourself a deadline and stick to it! If you want to improve your running, pick an event and get signed up! Project manage your goals like you would any other important task. Bear in mind that weight and size is an outcome, so make sure that you are focusing on the behaviours first. Log your success in a journal to show you are sticking to your plan.

If goals are clear, SMART and compelling, broken down into short, medium and long term goals, they are much easier to achieve. It can be hard to reconcile today’s behaviour with achieving a goal that is too distant or too vague so keep it real and close to you by visualising and reflecting upon your goals daily.

Obviously the element we haven’t discussed is the behaviours needed to succeed – thinking about goals is only going to work when matched with the appropriate action! Taking goal-setting into goal-getting requires action – so whatever you do, make sure you are taking steps every day to get closer to your goals. When your goals are vivid and clear then you will know that each and every action you take will either take you a step closer, or a step further away. Remind yourself of the ‘why’ and make sure that each decision is taking you a step closer to your dreams.

For more fat loss, fitness, health and nutrition secrets make sure you sign up to the mailing list!

Every training session you do, every time you eat according to your healthy plan or prepare a healthy meal, every bit of general activity you do each day is putting money in your own personal ‘body bank account’.

Deposits are when you stick to your eating plan or exercise programme.  When you eat something that isn’t ideal or when you miss a training session, you are making a withdrawal.

The aim is to treat our bodies as a savings account (with no overdraft allowed…) not a credit card that is maxed to the limit!

It is easy to keep spending when we have credit cards at our disposal, but now is the time to metaphorically cut them up. You will not lose weight if you are constantly withdrawing from an account with non-existent funds.

If you have enough funds ‘saved up’, or if you have been eating well and exercising consistently, you can justify having earned a ‘withdrawal’. You don’t have to stop having treats altogether by any means, but you do need to make sure that the balance tipped in the right direction if you expect to get the results you are after – and think of the satisfaction you will feel when you do get those results!

Thinking like this can really help you get your head around the concept that it is the little things that make all the difference, when applied regularly and consistently.  It can help you see how something that might seem so small as to be insignificant, such as taking the stairs every day, can, over time, add up to big savings!  It can also help you realise just how damaging that daily cookie and sugary coffee-based drink can be to your fat loss goals.

No matter what exercise or nutrition changes you are making, the key to success is consistency.  Most diet approaches will work if regularly and consistently applied.

Thinking about your ‘Body Bank Account’ can also help you to get rid of an ‘all or nothing’ approach to nutrition and exercise.  We all want to give it our all when we start, but then a minor deviation can make us feel like we’ve blown it all.   But that is like saying ‘oh no, I’ve just spent £100 on a pair of shoes, I’ve ruined it now so I must go and blow the rest on a new car’!  You can suddenly see how illogical that thought process is, can’t you?

Your new ‘Body Bank Account’ response to over-indulging would be to make sure you start re-paying straight away, to offset the indulgence.  This is how many ‘naturally’ thin people behave – we often look at people who seem to be able to eat ‘anything they want’ but if you were to look more closely at their habits you would see that they allow themselves the odd treat, usually don’t go overboard as they aren’t stressing about eating in the first place, but then naturally cut back for the rest of the day, or a few days.

For more fat loss, fitness, health and nutrition secrets make sure you sign up to my mailing list!