The true motivation

Do you know why you joined a gym?

When people come to us they always begin with a very similar story. They often tell us how they would like to have the 'body of their dreams', they want to look good and be the envy of all of their friends.

But when you question someone who claims they want to look better, when you really dig deep, the answer is usually the same.

In short, they don't want a perfect body or to appear flawless. They want to develop the self confidence that they have never had.

It is important to mention that some people do actually want to achieve this look. but they usually come across very differently, they have an obviously different set of motivating factors and their results tend to differ too.

For most the pursuit of a better body is the vehicle for addressing underlying issues of self esteem and confidence. The first order of the day is learning to love yourself, because if you don't then it's a hell of a lot harder for others to. This is not the same kind of love that comes from narcissism or arrogance, it is the kind of unconditional love which we tend to reserve for others.

The process of being in control of something as personally and emotionally loaded as how you look and then seeing it change for the better due to your behaviour is an immensely rewarding process. A feeling of control and security leads to improved confidence; you begin to love yourself.


Secondly when people begin to comment on the your new appearance you feel good. As much as you try to ignore it, when someone comments about how good you're looking, you feel great, it fuels the fire.

Now hooked on the positive emotions as the reward centres in your brain are in overdrive you commit to the lifestyle.

You cannot put a price in this kind of improvement in your quality of life. Ultimately the period before this is a negative cycle of bad feelings, you are alive but you're drifting. You don't feel good so you want to change, but at the same time you don't have the confidence to believe you can do it.

We see people coming from all sorts of backgrounds who tell us the same story. Absolutely anyone can do it, all you need is the expertise and support system to get you there.

Supplement Seminar 2 from RWLGym

How Duchess Kate should lose her baby weight

How does this make you feel?



I know it's difficult to stomach, but it really is on the cards that Prince Harry and his girlfriend Cressida are moving in together. I'll keep you up to speed with any updates.

In other not so surprising news, the Duchess of Cambridge has had a baby, our future king has been born.

During this special time for the country, uproar is brewing over the suggestion that the Duchess is ready to consider a post-natal exercise and nutrition programme so soon after having given birth. Social media in particular has exploded, with Blue Peter's Katie Hill starting a twitter campaign #dontbuyok in an attempt to punish the magazine for its sins.

Do people not understand that all publicity is good publicity?

What really baffles me, through all of this hoo hah is that anyone is surprised by what this medium will do to get much needed attention.

So what I will offer is a list of things to do when considering getting in shape after a baby:

1. Do everything in your own time, you know when you feel up to it.
2. Ignore celebrity weight loss stories, they are exceptional circumstances and probably exaggerated.
3. Start with food first. The chances are your nutritional habits will have changed while you were pregnant. Create a routine that gets you feeling better and works with your lifestyle before you attempt anything active. Also the better your nutrition, the better the baby's nutrition.
4. Keep your nutrition simple, don't rely on any supplements. Go for healthy fats (fish/nuts/avocadoes/seeds), protein (beef/chicken/turkey/legumes/pulses) and as many vegetables as you can manage. If you can avoid anything processed at this point you will be doing yourself a huge favour.
5. Get an all clear from your GP.  
6. Start exercise slowly, allowing your body time to adjust, it's taken 9 months to get to where it is now and it will (and should) take at least that long to get back to normal. Go for a walk, or go swimming; just do something which is relaxing but invigorating.
7. Focus on eating and exercising to feel good, not to 'burn fat' or 'push yourself', feeling good will get you looking good eventually and you will be much healthier for it.
8. Stretch carefully. Pregnancy will almost certainly have altered your musculature. To avoid the effects like back pain etc. make sure you stretch out any tight spots like the front of your hips and chest/shoulders. Again don't overdo it, especially in the first few months. The hormone changes will leave you more supple in certain areas.
9. When you feel ready and you have spoken to your GP, you can begin controlled resistance training again.
10. Have a goal in mind, discuss it with a professional who can guide you as to what is realistic and safe.

This is almost certainly what the Duchess will actually be doing. In fact, with this kind of attitude and diligence this programme alone will give you the results you deserve after all that hard work with the baby.

One reason why mum isn't always right

Please nobody tell her I said that...

Is it possible that the obesity epidemic we are experiencing is not due to what we eat, or when we eat but how we eat?

We were all told as children that we had to finish our plates, in fact in UK culture it is considered rude to leave food. If it is left then it will go to waste.

"There are people all over the world who would be glad for this food so don't be disrespectful and eat it."

It's not really a logical justification is it? Isn't gluttony just as disrespectful? It would make sense to save the rest and have it later when you are hungry again.

"If you don't finish your dinner then you won't get any desert"

Eating beyond the point of satisfaction is rewarded with sweet tasting foods, conditioning us to always eat in excess.


When we are small children we instinctively stop eating when we are no longer hungry, and it seems that we are one of the few cultures who iron that response out:

• Throughout India, Ayurvedic tradition advises eating until 75% full.
• The Japanese practice hari hachi bu, eating until 80% full.
• Islamic guidance from the Qur’an indicates that excess eating is a sin.
• The Chinese specify eating until 70% full.
• The prophet Muhammad described a full belly as one containing 1/3 food, 1/3 liquid, 1/3 air (nothing).
• There is a German expression that says, “Tie off the sack before it gets completely full.”
• “Drink your food and chew your drink,” is an Indian proverb that encourages us to eat slowly enough and chew thoroughly enough, to liquefy our food, and move our drink around our mouth and thoroughly taste it before swallowing.
• When someone is finished eating in France they don’t say “I’m full,” rather, “I have no more hunger.”

The best way to control how you eat when you are used to finishing your plate is to eat slowly. Eating quickly results in people eating more and feeling less satisfied.

There are two types of hunger, physical hunger and mental hunger. Physical hunger is pretty simple, anyone who has gone a long time without food will know what it is. You are physically hungry if you look at a plate of iceberg lettuce and it makes your mouth water. It doesn't matter what you eat, you just need to eat something, lettuce has never tasted so good.

Mental hunger is different, it's the 'I could eat' feeling. If someone presented that plate of lettuce to you wouldn't be interested. However, some brownies...

Mental hunger can also be emotion based, comfort eating, boredom eating and anger eating. If you are eating to comfort yourself then you will never stop, because unfortunately your body doesn't have an 'I've eaten enough to solve my problems' reflex! Learn to control your emotions by asking yourself, would I eat the lettuce?

Physical hunger is satiated by eating, irrespective of what and how. Mental hunger requires time spent eating to be effective. This is why even though they eat fewer calories at a sitting, people who eat slowly report less hunger than those who hurry food.



You should eat without distractions, making meal times a priority lasting at least 20 minutes. Listen to your hunger cues, when you have finished your meal you should feel that you still have room left but are satisfied. The aim of a meal is to feel better than when you started it, not 'full'. Don't be one of those people who spends all day thinking about food and then ignores it as it goes in at the speed of light.

Take the time to understand your eating. If you have a good diet on paper but are still not feeling satisfied then this will probably be the answer.

Seminar June 2013

http://www.slideshare.net/RWLGym

Are you too sympathetic?

Most of us spend our lives walking around thinking we're immortal. Not in a literal sense, but we never really consider how fragile we are until something goes seriously wrong.

It's comforting to think that we are something more than the sum of our parts, I suppose that's why the idea of a spirit protected by a God is so appealing. That no matter what, we will never really come to any harm.

But the truth as I see it is that we are mortal, our bodies are strong but will eventually stand the test of time and that will be it. We will age, and we will weaken; the only thing we can control is how and when that happens. They say the only certainty in life is death, sounds pretty morose doesn't it? I don't think so, sounds liberating to me.

The idea of an endless existence doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I can't think of anything that I wouldn't get bored of eventually, and then what? We have a limited amount of time to be as happy as possible, and in order to do that we need to prioritise doing what makes us happy.

Many people see this as an invitation to cram as much into every day as possible. We all try to seize the day. The best career, the best social life, hobbies, relationships, family and then all of the essential things like sleeping, training and eating.

Where does this leave us?


Fried

We are over-stimulated and as a result incredibly stressed. Our sympathetic nervous (SNS)system is in overdrive, we don't have the time to recover and so we age fast, we feel tired and generally speaking although we may be busy are we really happy?

People often suggest ways to reduce stress, by reducing the activity of the SNS. Better diet, better exercise etc. It will help but it is not the be all and end all. In order to get the full benefits of stress relief people need to engage in activities that promote recovery by increasing the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

Here are some options:

Yoga
Baths
Massage
Meditation
Reading
Listening to music

The most common objection to this is not having the time. What I tend to do in this situation is to offer a thought.

“The best time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”



When was the last time you just went and sat outside and zoned out? Spent half an hour, just sitting looking at a view and enjoying being relaxed. If it was the last time you went abroad then you should reconsider how you view rest and relaxation.

It is impossible to be active and effective all of the time. In order to really be the best version of yourself you need to treat yourself like an athlete.

An athlete will spend a moderate amount of time working very hard, to improve themselves, but they then will spend a similar amount of time recovering, allowing themselves to remain in balance. If they trained all day every day and operated on 6 hours sleep they would just be constantly working at a low intensity. Never improving and never being capable of their best.


Your life should be similar, when you work, word hard and efficiently. When you're done, stop, and relax.

Something to consider before your big night out

It is estimated that people have been drinking alcohol for over 10,000 years. It is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it seems almost impossible to imagine life without it's presence. The 18th birthday is a huge landmark birthday, not because you can vote, or get married or anything like that, but because you are finally allowed to join the rest of the world and get drunk.

Alcohol is a drug, there's no two ways about it, and it doesn't get nearly as bad a reputation as it deserves. Smoking is seen as a horrible habit by most, and the use of more benign illegal drugs like marijuana is met with derision and harsh judgement. Alcohol is addictive and damaging. But contrary to everything alcohol in regular and moderate doses has been linked to reduced incidence of heart disease, TRUE

so therefore is good for you: RUBBISH.



Here is a list of the effects (good and bad) on your body when you consume alcohol.

Nutrient Uptake
When you ingest alcohol your body uses it as the primary fuel source. This means that any food which is ingested at the same time will be stored straight as fat.

Body Composition
Ethanol, which is the chemical in your beer which makes you feel drunk, contains 7 calories per gram. That is almost as much as a gram of fat. Every one of those calories comes with zero nutritional value, which means zero bang for your buck. So when you're consuming a couple of pints, just from the alcohol there are almost 400 calories. That doesn't even include the sugar.

This won't help body composition. That was an obvious one but we have to start from somewhere.

Digestion
Chronic alcohol consumption reduces the quantity of proteins secreted from your pancreas. This is bad news on two fronts as a lack of these proteins will result reduced insulin sensitivity and poor digestion, making it incredibly difficult to be healthy.

Sex Hormones
Alcohol is a powerful mediator of both sex hormones. It increases circulating levels of oestrogen and reduces testosterone by increasing the effectiveness of the aromatase enzyme. This enzyme acts to convert oestrogens to testosterone naturally in the body. Accelerated aromatisation can result endocrine disorders, including infertility, gonadal atrophy, and feminization in men and women.

Not what you want really.

Heart Disease
Those who drink a moderate amount of alcohol (not just red wine) have been shown to be those with the lowest risk of heart disease. The reasons offered for this are varied. Some say that it is because people who abstain from alcohol entirely are likely to be ex heavy drinkers. It could be that those who have a moderate intake of alcohol are more likely to be moderate in everyday life. Other research suggests that people who drink moderately have improved lipid profiles, meaning less dangerous fat in the blood.



The simple fact is that for anyone serious about getting in shape there is no reason to use alcohol. In my opinion there is no reason for anyone to use the substance. If this sounds like a problem then it's time to reassess your values in life.

In one year's time what would you be happier with? A greatly improved body and health with a clear memory of good times, or a body and health that's not what it could have been and a years' worth of hazy memories?

Knowledge, not as powerful as you might think

Why do you hire a coach? Why do you read these articles?

I would expect that the answer is the same to both questions. Something like:

To gain access to knowledge which you would otherwise be unable to get.

Yes a coach will tell you how to exercise, how to eat and exactly what you need to do to achieve your goal. The articles are in the same vein, but here they offer you a more in depth explanation of the principles which we use to template to our programmes.

The knowledge you obtain from RWL will allow you to get everything you want, in terms of health, fitness and general wellbeing.

After all knowledge is power, is it not?



How many people read self improvement books? I do sometimes, and I know lots of people who do. They give you a step by step guide on how it is you can achieve what you want to do whether it be money, education, fitness or everything combined.

They give you knowledge, they give you motivation (which is at best temporary) and then they set you on your way. Where they fall short is in providing you with the necessary lifestyle change which allows you to change the way you think, act and live; which means there are almost always undesirable results. All of the external aspects of your lifestyle which have lead you to the point which you are at are still there, you can't realistically change everything at once, but you attempt it, and you fail.

This is why I am a coach and not a personal trainer. A trainer tells you what you need to do and will get you what you want. This often sacrifices the client's long term well being  as it sets them up for a crash. They have gained knowledge, but they do not know how to apply it in their everyday life, after they have achieved their goal. They are either on it or off it.

A coach begins slowly and helps to coach the client into new habits, which are sustainable and realistic. They too get a result but they have done it in a way that means they will be able to maintain it for the rest of their lives, they have gained knowledge but also learned how to apply it consistently.

This is truly powerful knowledge, and I believe is extremely valuable.

A coach will keep you accountable and will develop genuine change in your life, leading to long term and consistent results.

Motivation is underrated

The promise of a dose of motivation sells tickets to seminars, it sells books, DVDs and big glossy posters. Motivation is infectious, it breathes life into you and gives you the energy to go out there, make the plans, do the grunt work and begin your journey. When someone strolls into the room with a fresh new attitude on life it picks others up, the fact of the matter is that we could all do with a little motivation from time to time.





However I see a problem, because motivation is temporary and often lacking. It ebbs and flows, and when people are in this state they fall of the wagon of whatever they're doing. The most clichéd example of this us in health and fitness.

As my clients reading this will know, last week I broke my arm. This was bad news for a number of obvious reasons, but one of the biggest factors is that it has killed my motivation to exercise.

The reason for this is that I can no longer do what I love to do. I almost exclusively perform compound moves with barbells, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, cleans, rows, presses. There is no particular reason for this over other methods of training other than that it was I enjoy doing.

Now I can't do it for another 8 weeks and 6 days (who's counting?), and my motivation has gone.

The knock on effect if this is that if I don't train then motivation to eat well drops acutely. I time my meals around exercise, and without it the structure and composition of my meals has gone down the proverbial.

But that's not going to be a problem, because I'm still going to exercise. I don't need motivation any more, I've left it behind for good.



What has happened is through repetition of behaviour, i.e. training 3-4 times per week the habit of exercising has become so ingrained that if I don't do it I feel something is missing. It's an interesting paradox; I don't get to do what I usually enjoy doing, so I don't want to exercise. On the other hand if I don't exercise, it annoys me.

The reason for all this self-indulgent writing is that until this point I had never really appreciated how powerful the system of implementing habits is. I had never really had to test them.

Habits take time, but make health easy. For example if I ever for whatever reason have to have a breakfast without protein, it annoys me. If I skip a meal, it annoys me. If I get less than 8 hours sleep it really annoys me

So when your coach gives you a habit, take it seriously and embrace it. There may well be a time in the future where you have to rely on it to keep you moving in the right direction, and after all that's the only important measurement.

Herbalife's meal replacement gives me the shakes

Open up the Herbalife website this is what you will be greeted with:

 
A pretty immense celebrity endorsement. For those that haven't heard about him, Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the best footballers of all time; this is because his excellent technical ability is built on a foundation of incredible power and athleticism. Looking at what he's achieved , if he drinks this stuff then it must be good, surely?

The reason they can get this kind of endorsement is because Herbalife is an incredible company. In 2010 they recorded sales of 4.3 billion USD. The company help millions of people to manage their weight by replacing their meals with 'meal replacement shakes'. These shakes are a low calorie option, which have a relatively high levels of protein while keeping fat and carbs low.

With all that out of the way, I guarantee that even if it was delivered to him first thing every morning, Ronaldo would not have a Herbalife meal replacement shake for breakfast. 

Herbalife is a good way of losing weight, but then again so is starvation. The truth is that neither of them are healthy. Herbalife products buy into the notion that being thin is healthier than being fat. But if you are shedding muscle and bone along with your fat, whilst sending your metabolism to an all time low leaving you feeling fatigued and hungry, is that getting healthier or is that getting thinner?



Herbalife is the best example of what is wrong with the health and fitness industry. If you want to make a lot of money off of vulnerable people then this would be the way to do it.

First you approach them with the products, you promise them sincerely that if they use these products then they will lose weight. That's not a lie, they will lose weight. They take the products and begin to achieve what they want.

Give it 6 months and they have invested a lot of money in what are quite expensive products when you consider their actual nutritional value. They have lost weight and are now happy with their appearance.

They have a stark choice, either they continue to take these products for the rest of their life, or they go back to eating just food. If they go for the latter option, they have a problem as the reason they were unhappy in the first place was that they didn't know how to control their intake to maintain a healthy body.

So they gain weight again, they're trapped.

The only way to get a healthy body in the long term is to have a healthy diet.

The only way to learn how to eat healthily is through discipline and self control. The actual answer is a very simple one, eat nutritionally dense, unprocessed food as much as possible.

Herbalife is a quick fix, and unless you fancy being on meal replacement shakes for the rest of your life, avoid it.