"Mastering Fitness Consistency: Why Ditching the Start-and-Stop Approach Leads to Success"

Certainly! Wondering why so many people fall off the fitness wagon by February? Each year, folks set out on a mission to lose weight or get in shape, only to hit a roadblock around February or March. What's the deal? 

A major issue is this start-and-stop mentality. Picture this: after the holiday season, we decide to kick off our fitness journey post-Christmas because, well, Christmas is a whirlwind of indulgence. So, we decide to reset in the new year. The problem is, this approach messes with our overall attitude toward exercise and fitness. I've emphasized the importance of consistency before, so I won't delve into that too much now. The point is, this sporadic workout routine based on the time of year won't lead to success. It's not just Christmas; it's also Easter, summer vacations, birthdays, or moments when you just need a break. Before you know it, you're on and off the diet and workout rollercoaster every other month, disrupting progress each time. 

I'm not suggesting you skip the fun times or cancel plans altogether. No way! What I'm saying is, don't write off an entire month just because it's Christmas or you're taking a break for a couple of weeks. Try to maintain your workouts, whether it's running, cycling, or whatever you enjoy. These activities should be part of your routine, taking a break only during legitimate pauses like Christmas when everything slows down for a few days. But just a few days. If you have Christmas parties lined up, great! But don't let your nutrition go completely off the rails just because you're out more than usual. Five nights out plus 3-4 days of Christmas festivities shouldn't be a license to overeat for 30 straight days. That's a bad habit that's likely to repeat itself during the summer or whenever your social calendar is full. 

For those new to the fitness game, it's easy to fall into this trap. Another reason for failure is going all out in January, pushing hard, and then burning out. Think of it like a sprinter versus a long-distance runner. The sprinter goes hard but can't sustain it for long. The long-distance runner can go the distance, adjusting speed as needed. Slow during busy times (like Christmas), and a bit faster when you have more free time. But the crucial point? They don't stop. 

So, when it comes to fitness, especially weight loss, be the long-distance runner, not the sprinter. The sprinter stops and starts, but the long-distance runner? They keep going. 

Unlocking the Secrets of Functional Fitness!

Hey there, let's dive deep into the world of functional fitness – a term that's been making waves in the fitness realm. If you're a gym enthusiast, chances are you've encountered it. Now, I'm a big advocate for functional fitness, but what exactly does it entail, and how can it revolutionize your workout routine? Let's dissect it in a way that not only makes sense but also emphasizes the power of functional fitness. 

So, when we chat about "function," we're essentially talking about how our bodies operate. In the gym, the focus is on boosting strength, right? I've delved into this concept in some of my previous discussions. The idea is to engage in exercises that elevate muscle strength, enabling them to function like well-oiled machines. Alternatively, we refine specific movements to enhance their functional efficiency. 

Now, let's zoom in on two exercises that skeptics might dub as less aligned with functional fitness. Exhibit A: the barbell deadlift. There are various deadlift variations, but for now, let's zero in on this widely embraced form. Unless you've sworn off picking things up from the floor (which, let's be real, isn't practical), you're essentially engaging in low-key functional fitness every day – from mundane tasks to picking up your kids. 

And let's not forget the orchestra of muscles at play during a deadlift in the realm of functional fitness: 

• Quads at the front of your legs extending the knee – a crucial aspect of functional fitness. 

• Glutes joining the party to extend the hip – yet another key element of functional fitness. 

• A squad of muscles – traps, lats, obliques, abs, TVA, spinal erectors, and quadratus lumborum – teaming up to keep your upper body steady, showcasing the multifaceted nature of functional fitness. 

So, this so-called "non-functional" exercise is, in fact, a superhero for everyday movements, making them function better. It's like providing your muscles with a VIP pass to the pinnacle of functional fitness excellence. 

Now, you might be thinking, "Okay, deadlifts might not be the best example," although I've heard people dismiss them often. Let's pivot and chat about leg extensions as our second example within the functional fitness realm. It's all about bulking up those quads. Strengthening them means your leg movement functions like a precisely tuned instrument, perfectly encapsulating the essence of functional fitness. 

Sure, flashy exercises like jump squats, box jumps, plyo lunges, Olympic lifts, and the wonders of CrossFit are stealing the functional fitness spotlight. They're dynamic and undeniably have their Place. But here's the scoop – neglecting a bunch of exercises just because they got slapped with the "non-functional" tag means missing out on the diverse benefits of functional fitness. 

Incorporating a mix of exercises, even those that might seem less glamorous, is the functional fitness strategy your body craves. It not only reduces your risk of injury during intense workouts but also primes you for seamless moves in your everyday dynamic activities and sports adventures outside of the gym. 

So, don't let the term "non-functional" intimidate you. Embrace the diversity in your workouts, and witness the transformative power of functional fitness taking center stage in your fitness journey! 

How varied should your workouts be?

The answer to this question is all dependent on you. Let me give you some examples.

If your goal is to gain muscle or strength, then keeping the workouts gym-based and simple is probably the best for you. Make small adjustments to load rep ranges and exercise modality as the weeks go by to ensure that you’re progressing. But that’s probably as far as you need to go from a variability perspective.

If your goal is to run a marathon, then the variability comes from the type of runs you are doing. One of the runs in your typical week may need to be a longer one; one may need to have some sort of interval or incline work included; while one may need to be a recovery run at a slower pace. And you could add one or two sessions in the gym that are specifically designed to complement your training and contribute towards injury prevention. This may look very different from the example above and include a wider range of exercises.

Another example is for the gym-goers who don’t really have a specific goal in mind. To these guys the amount of variation required is entirely up to you. If you take me as an example, pretty much I do the same movements each week and change only rep ranges, load and time under tension. I enjoy this way of training as you can monitor your progress much more easily. While this works well for some people, others find it unbelievably boring. So, changing exercise modality and style every other week may be more appealing if that does seem a bit boring to you.

In summary, you don’t need to be doing loads of exercises to progress, as long as you are creating progressive overload over the weeks. Vary the routine more if you find it boring or have more dynamic goals, but remember you're not losing much (if anything at all) by keeping everything consistent.

 See you next time.

What we mean by good form

Good form. We hear this all the time in the gym. But, what does it really mean? For me, there is more to it than simply placing yourself in a position that looks right and then moving from A to B.

Let me explain….

Let’s take a squat using a bar, for example. First, take into consideration what muscles create the movement:

1. The glutes to extend the hips.

2. The quads to extend the knees.

These may be the main movers of the exercise, but are they the only muscles at work? The answer is no, as the rest of the body also works, but statically.

The muscles of the core keep the lower back stable; the muscles in the spine keep it in neutral and help prevent it flexing and/or rotating; the muscles around the shoulder stop the shoulders from rounding. If this is all in proper place when you squat, then you train more than just the legs that are moving the weight from position 1 to position 2 and back again.

All the above muscles of the upper body are also working to create stability, so it makes sense that if you get the position right you will strengthen the body in the correct way, creating good movement pathways, strength and stability.

In real money this means you:

1.Limit your chances of injury.

2. Create better movement patterns benefiting your performance in the gym or any other activity as well as your movement in day to day activities.

3. Strengthen the desired muscles in each given exercise.

With all that in mind, to think of the act of weight training as maintaining your body’s position against load, rather than moving a load from one position to another, is what I consider to be the definition of good form.

Adopt this in all your exercises in the gym and, not only will you get stronger in the right places, but you are less likely to suffer an injury and may even remedy existing ones.

See you next time.

Do you need to back squat and deadlift?

The barbell back squat has become very popular over years, heavily influenced by social media, leading many people to believe that it is an essential part of your routine if you want to get stronger. So, let’s look into this a little further.

Squats and deadlifts are two movements that we should all be doing. One way or another, we perform them daily: for example, getting up and down from a seated position, or picking something up off the floor, however heavy the item may be. So, it makes sense that this is a movement pattern that needs to be strong, and training correctly will do just that.

Both the back squat and the deadlift using a barbell are exercises used not only by powerlifters in their training and competitions but also by many people who have been working out over a long period. Undeniably, they make you stronger. But notice that I said people who have been working out for a long time. They are great exercises, but they are fairly technical ones and they require stability throughout the body, from the shoulders and torso down to the hips, knees and ankles.

Only a handful of the people I train perform these exercises, and they have been training a while and are relatively free from injury. This is something you can work towards if you want to, but you can easily perform a squat or a deadlift that isn’t barbell-loaded. This strengthens the movements but with a much lower risk of potential injury.

What you shouldn’t do is walk into a gym for the first time and do these exercises. You wouldn’t walk into a boxing club and step into the ring on your first day: if you did, you’d get hurt. Like the boxing gym, the barbell squat and deadlift should be considered in the top tier of exercises—and for many it may not even be necessary at all.

See you next time

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Building Layers of fitness

If you have been reading my articles or watching my channels you will have heard me talk about building layers of fitness.  But, what do I actually mean by that?

In a way, it explains itself. But beyond the obvious, there are many things that are far more important than simply making you fitter.

Let’s simplify: each time you come into the gym you get slightly fitter and therefore are better adapted for your session the following week. This is one of the reasons that I focus on the importance of creating progressions over the weeks and months of training, as your body is very good at adapting to a stimulus. So for every session, every week, month and year that you train consistently, the more and more robust you become.

This leads me directly to my next point.  One of the things I am trying to do with my clients is to help them to build their stamina, making them more robust, as well as fitter. The fitter and stronger you become, the easier it is to motivate yourself to visit the gym or do whatever style of workout you prefer, as you can see and feel the progressions and start to enjoy the process until it becomes a habit. I talk a lot about steady progression so you can build those layers incrementally. At the beginning, this may be a little boring because people are usually highly motivated at the start of a programme and so may feel like this approach is a little restrictive. But if you don’t build the layers of strength and fitness steadily, something is going to give—and usually, it’s your body.

For example: if you have a goal of increasing the strength of your squat, doing multiple workouts in a week that include squats, increasing the weight/reps and sets every week etc, your squat will get stronger and your muscles will likely get stronger too.  But because you will have built the layers in your muscles too quickly, your connective tissue (ligaments and tendons) won’t have kept up—this is one of the main reasons for niggles and injuries related to lifting weights. Usually people ignore the early signs waiting until they are so severe that the individual stops training, before starting again once recovered, and then repeating the process. Or the person consults a physiotherapist who advises them to build up more gradually with some specific exercises, but they still have to work around the pain of an injury on top of that.

Basically, my point is that you need to progress your workouts and build the layers of fitness steadily or your body will force you to slow down and concentrate on the areas that have been neglected.  Worse still, you may be put off training for a long time if not forever. For those reasons it is so important to progress your sessions steadily over time.

So, don’t see working out as a short-term thing, and remember to build those layers properly.

See you next time.

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Assisting Exercises

This week, let’s talk about assisting exercises— what they are, and how to fit them into your workout.

Assisting exercises are exercises that strengthen the usually smaller muscles surrounding a joint, thereby creating more stability.  Ultimately, this helps to improve the activity of the more dynamic multi-joint movement when training in a gym, or the more dynamic movements when playing a sport.

Let me give you an example:  with a squat, three joints are moving—the ankle the knee and the hip. This is a multi-joint movement and so is categorised as a compound exercise. A leg extension or leg curl moves only through the knee joint so it would be an assisting exercise to a squat.

Let’s take a barbell bench press.  This is a compound move because the action is at the shoulder and the elbow joint. An assisting exercise may be an external rotation exercise of the shoulder or a lateral raise as these move over one joint.

You would program these exercises at the end of a workout and also you could do some of them as a separate routine every day, or even every other day for the ones that don’t require much equipment. You can add core work into this category as well, such as planks, cobras and crunches etc.

This leaves us the middle section of a program; this is where we do assisting exercises that still move through multiple joints. The reason these still qualify as assisted exercises is that you generally don’t load them as much in order to limit any stress going through the joints. But you are continuing to strengthen the muscles for a squat, for example, by doing a split squat or lunge without having to put a hight amount of stress through the joint as you would do with a barbell squat.

There are loads of variations of these: for example, you could be doing a bar squat and in the middle section you could add in a goblet squat before finishing with a split squat or step-up at the end. All of these are assisted exercises as the load placed on the body decreases as you progress through the program. You could finish with a single joint movement like a leg extension. At home, to develop your lower body routine you could do some single joint hip stability work in the form of hip bridges and hip clams to strengthen the muscles of the hip joint. These are just a few ideas of what you could do for the lower body and you can create the same system when doing upper body exercises.

Just a side note…

Remember, you don’t have to train one muscle group at a time— I was just using this as an example.

That’s it for now, see you next time.

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How to create a gym program

 Today I wanted to give you all a few tips on how to create your workouts and gym programs.

Let’s start in the gym. It’s good to create a general rule of running a program for a minimum of 3 weeks, maximum of 6 before upgrading. Notice I say upgrading rather then changing, why?... because if you have set yourself a goal of getting your squat stronger for example you will need some form of squat in order to progress. You wouldn’t try to increase your speed over 250 meters on a rowing machine, then change from rowing to running after 4 weeks.

The first thing we all need to do is establish a goal. If that goal is overall strength I would target a minimum of 2 sessions a week with the main bulk of the workouts using compound exercises, why? you get more bang for your buck. Using compound exercises uses more muscles at once building more total strength and is more time efficient then doing single joint exercises. Your thinking squat and deadlift variation for lower body, pressing and pulling variation for upper. Lets use the examples of

Goblet squat

Kb deadlift

Db bench press

Pulldown neutral grip to start.

I would add a little core work and shoulder stability work for the assisting exercises but lets keep it simple for now, I can cover this in another post.

In a previous post I talked about the different progressions we can make in a gym, if you missed it do not fear, you can follow the link if you missed it. But lets quickly revisit those.

1 increase reps

2 increase sets

3 increase time under tension

4 decrease rest time

5 increase intensity or load in other words

6 increase the amount of sessions that you do in a week

You could add a 7th which would be to increase the complexity of an exercise. For example a back loaded squat is a progression of a goblet squat, even if the load is similar. For this post lets focus on points 1,2,5 and 7.

So lets say you have designed your workout and you set yourself a goal of getting to 12 reps on each exercise by week 4, start with a weight you can do for 8 and once you get to 12 you could move on to progression 2 which is adding a set and seeing if you can do 12 for that set as well. If not build up over the weeks until you get to 12 on the extra set, then you can up the weight.

Once you up the weight spend another 4-6 weeks upping the reps at the new weight, then you can change the complexity of some of the exercises and start the process again. Examples of changing the complexity of the exercises I previously mentioned are - goblet squat- bar box squat

-db bench-barbell bench press

-kb deadlift-straight bardeadlift

-neutral grip pulldown-wide grip pulldown.

Remember it doesn’t have to be exactly that, there a loaaaaads of variations so spending some time doing a little research on this is a really good use of time.

But back to the program design I have effectively given you around 16-24 weeks of programs using a really simple design and simple progressions, you don’t have to include loads of complex exercises and program formats, doing the basic movements patterns well, while steadily progressing them, often gets people the best results.

for exercise tips follow the link to my channel to the squat/deadlift tutorial and more

That’s it for now, see you next time.

Is running bad for you?

Is running bad for you???

I’ve been asked this question so many times. And I’ve also heard, and read, a whole lot of advice that suggests that, yes, running is bad and you should avoid it. But this advice is usually given out regardless of any assessment of the individual asking the question, and the answer often reflects only the opinion of the person giving it.

So, should you run?  Let’s break it down a bit. Running is something that we have evolved naturally to do: so why do so many people believe that it’s detrimental to our wellbeing?

Of course, injuries caused by running affect how people think about, and these can occur for a number of reasons.  For example, let’s take someone who is ordinarily sedentary and has decided to get fit. If, instead of going through a measured approach of building the layers of fitness steadily, he or she starts doing multiple runs, progressing the speed and duration far too quickly, they are likely to end up with calf issues, knee issues, back issues or shin splints, or maybe more than one of those symptoms. Understandably, they would identify running as the cause of their injuries, whereas it’s far more likely that they’ve moved from sedentary to active too rapidly, pushing the body beyond its capability at that point.  Remember—it’s important to build up your layers steadily and slowly.

Injuries can also be caused when running because we all have one side of our body that is more dominant than the other. Working in the way that many of us do, in jobs that are often repetitive and sedentary, we develop patterns of movement that create imbalance. And so, a sudden change of pace—like deciding to train for a half marathon from a standing start—is likely to cause an injury.  The injury is not necessarily caused by the act running itself, but is more likely to occur because the knee, hip or ankle joint is weak, and the amount of force put through it by the repetitive act of running magnifies that weakness.

There are also some working in the fitness industry who say that cardio and fat loss can be done using weights, which is true, as you simply need to be in a calorie-deficit state to lose weight. And you can design a program in such a way that you will work your cardiovascular system as well. If you’re weight-training while being on a calorie-deficit diet you may lose less muscle tissue than you would otherwise, but personally I don’t see why one can’t compliment the other.

It it works for you, definitely keep running as part of your weekly routine, but I would always recommend you do some sort of strength work to help keep your joints more robust to counterbalance the impact of such a repetitive form of cardiovascular exercise.

I guess like in many of my previous posts the take-home point is this—if done sensibly, with steady and measured progression, running is NOT bad for you.

Thanks everyone and see you all next month.

Five ways to progress your workouts (cardio)

Last month’s blog shared six ways to progress your workout in the gym. But what if cardio is your game? It’s simple: basically, you can adopt a pretty similar approach.  Typically, if running is your main form of exercise then simply increasing the distance covered will ensure progress.  But there are some other ways of developing your workout. Taking running as an example, these are a few things that you can do:

1-      Increase distance

This explains itself: simply, you add a little bit of distance, or go out running for longer.

2-      Increase speed of a circuit

After increasing the distance for a couple of sessions, you can revert to running your original route while trying to increase the speed at which you cover the distance.

3-      Increase course difficulty

Adding a run with a similar distance that includes a few hills or a light incline, for example, will naturally increase the difficulty of the run. You can then adopt the protocols 1 and 2 with this new inclined course.

4-      Add interval training

This is where you set a course, or find a field or track, where you do an interval of a certain amount of time at speed, before slowing the pace, and then repeating that process a few times.  For example, run for 20 seconds as fast as possible and follow this with a steady jog for 60 seconds to recover. Repeat this three to ten times.  Don’t forget to warm up and cool down with a steady jog of around three to five minute—you don’t want to cause yourself an injury!

5-      Increase frequency

This is the number of times you go for a run in a week and I would only make this progression after working through the other four steps above.

Remember, there is no rush to progress your workouts in or out of the gym. Don’t think that you have to make changes each and every week. I would target progress over a month before making another change, especially when increasing the frequency of your runs. So often injuries occur when someone goes from doing little or no exercise to doing a lot of the same type of exercise all at one time. You need to build up the layers of fitness before your body can tolerate multiple sessions in a week, particularly for something like running, which can place a lot of stress on your joints.

See you all next month.

Six ways to progress your workouts

When working out in a gym, most of us measure our progress by how much we increase the weight we can lift. The problem with this is that the longer you train, the more the rate at which you can increase the load slows down.  The first step is to stop measuring your progress by comparing how much weight you lifted this week with what you lifted the week before.

There are many ways of assessing your progress. You know you’re getting stronger if you perform an exercise one week and then, using the same weight, find it easier three weeks later. And if you can perform more reps using the same weight, that’s also a sign that you’re getting stronger.

Here are a few ways in which you can develop your exercises.

1-      Increase reps: This is an easy one.  Week on week, add a rep or two on any given exercise. Do this over a three/four week period.

2-      Increase the volume: This is the total amount of rounds you do in a session. If, for example, you do three sets of each exercise in a workout, add a fourth round the next time (or even the time after) to increase the total volume of the workout.

3-      Increase time under tension: This is how long you perform each individual rep of an exercise. The longer you take to perform a round of 10 reps, the more difficult that round will be. For example: you perform 10 reps on a bench press taking one second to bring the weight down and one second to bring the weight up, which makes a total of twenty seconds under tension. The next week, you do the same exercise with the same weight and the same number of reps, but you take three seconds to lower the weight and one second to raise: this gives your muscles forty seconds under tension, effectively doubling the time you’re working the muscle, thereby progressing the workout once again.

4-      Decrease the time you rest between sets: Basically, the less time you rest, the more challenging it is to maintain the reps designed in the workout. This method is good for increasing muscular endurance.

5-      Increase intensity:  Increase the weight of an exercise if you are weight-training, or the speed at which you do something: for example, if you run regularly, introduce some sprint intervals to your usual routine.

6-      Frequency: This is simply how many sessions you do in a week.

Generally, this is the order in which I would make changes to a client’s programme. It’s important to remember that there are many ways not only to increase the difficulty of an exercise, but also how to measure your progress.

Although this gives you ways of progressing a workout in a gym, these principles can be used when doing different types of exercise elsewhere—a topic I’ll be covering next month.

Thanks for reading and see you next month.

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Two reasons why weight training is beneficial for EVERYONE!

Often I get get asked why I always recommend weight-training to my clients, whatever their personal goals may be.  The answer is that it is beneficial for everyone and anyone, for two main reasons:

1 Makes you stronger and more resilient: Weight-training acts as an enabler for other forms of exercise. If you like walking, running or tennis, or you just want to ensure that you’re an active parent to your kids, having stronger muscles makes your joints more robust. And this, in turn, allows you to participate in more dynamic and fun activities outside the gym, while also limiting your chance of developing an injury.

I’m sure we have all heard of someone who hurt themselves playing football with the kids in the garden.  Basically, being stronger will lessen the chance of that happening.

For anyone who likes endurance-based activities, such as running or cycling, adding a balanced weights program not only helps develop your overall strength beyond all the hours of training and competition, but it can also enhance the efficiency of your movements. This may help your performance in whatever sport you are competing in.

2 You look more toned: The goal that so many people mention when discussing their motivation to train consistently is; “I don’t want to build muscle; I just want to be more toned”. Sound familiar? The truth is, you cannot look toned unless you build muscle, and it is very challenging to build muscle without doing some sort of resistance training.

Once you have lost enough body fat, you will begin to see the muscle you’ve been working on.  Loss of body fat alone won’t give that toned physique.  Only when fat loss is combined with building muscle through weight-training will you achieve the toned look.

And don’t worry! You will absolutely not bulk up if you add a weight training routine as part of your weekly programme, unless you are over-eating.  

So, if you think that using the weights room does not align with your goals and that it’s just a place for the bodybuilders and weightlifters, I’m here to tell you that it definitely works with any fitness goals, whatever they may be.

Why is protein so important when you are losing weight?

You’ve probably heard a lot of people like me going on about the importance of protein. But just why is it so crucial in our diet?

To answer that question, we need to understand what it is, and what it does.

Protein, just like carbohydrate and fat, is a macro nutrient. Its main function is the growth and repair of most of the tissue in the body. However, in the fitness industry, our main focus is on how protein helps to build muscle.

After water, protein is the second biggest component of our body.  And although we tend to only think of muscle in relation to protein, our gut is also mainly composed of it, as is as our hair, skin and nails. It is important for the function of the immune system, as well as transporting oxygen around the body through the bloodstream via a protein called haemoglobin. When you consider all these factors, in addition to the growth and repair function, it is easy to see why so many people place so much importance in getting enough protein each day.

Protein and weight loss

Let’s move on to weight loss. When we lose weight, we also lose water, fat and muscle. These things WILL all happen automatically, so we just need to try to ensure that we lose more body fat than muscle. What are the reasons for this?

1-      Healthy joints: Muscle keeps joints heathy and stable and less prone to injury, both in the joint and the muscle itself.

2-      Metabolism: Over time, a greater volume of muscle equates to a higher resting metabolic rate.

3-      Tone: Maintaining muscle while losing weight, combined with some resistance-training, will give the toned look that so many of us crave.

4-      Recovery time: Protein helps with muscle repair and recovery following exercise.

The main reason that protein is so important in your daily diet is that the average body needs around 100g of protein every day simply to fuel its basic needs.  If the protein doesn’t come from your food, the body will break down your muscle tissue instead to get what it needs.  And if you are on a calorie-deficit diet, this will happen at a faster rate than usual.

In my experience people usually find it quite tough to go straight up to 100 plus grams of protein in a day. So, a good way to begin, is to target your bodyweight in grams of protein per day. For example, if you weigh 70kg you should consume around 70g of protein per day, increasing the volume on days when you are exercising or on those when you are particularly active, and maybe taking in a little more if you are on a weight loss plan. Once this becomes a habit you can start to increase your intake.

Here are a few examples of how much protein is found in some foods:

Palm sized chicken breast- 20-30g

3 eggs- 18g

8oz steak- 40g

Lamb chop- 20g

Tuna steak- 30g

Salmon- 20-30g

Look for the leaner cuts of meat where you can, as well as choosing leaner mince.

Veggie? No problem, look for stuff like:

Beans

Legumes

Tofu

Quinoa

Chickpeas

That’s this month’s blog,

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Three Ways to Create a Calorie Deficit

There are many ways to create a calorie deficit. Like I said last time, they all work. The key is finding which one works for you. Today, I’ll go through three ways to do this.

1.       Counting your calories, using one of the many apps available

2.       Controlling your portions

3.       Intermittent fasting

Let’s start with number one; the counting-calories app. This is an accurate way of tracking your calorie intake.  Most apps will ask you a series of questions and give you a calorie target. I recommend that you record a week of your calorific consumption before making any changes. Then, add up your week’s total calorie intake and try to reduce it by 1,500 calories the following week. If the scales don’t change in two weeks, then reduce your calorie intake by another 500 per week over the following weeks until you start seeing a change. Don’t alter anything until you reach you reach the point when nothing is changing.

This method may be tedious at times, but it’s a really accurate way of tracking and making changes. Over time, you will find that you get an idea of how many calories are in different foods without measuring, so you’ll be able stop tracking your calories in detail each day, and will only need to focus on the number if you feel like a few more calories are creeping into your diet.

I find that understanding how many calories are in different foodstuffs helps people to make better choices and select foods that are dense in nutrients and low in calories, which combine to make you feel fuller even though you will be losing weight.

2. Portion Control. This is really for anyone who doesn’t want to count calories and finds it hard to change their choice of foods.

It really is as simple as putting food on a smaller plate, or measuring your food by sight. For example, a plate with a hand-sized portion of carbs and protein and two handfuls of vegetables. This method allows for easy changes to make a difference. So, if you aren’t losing weight, put less on your plate, or add a little more if you are losing weight too quickly.

3. Intermittent fasting. Although there are a few ways of doing this, these are the two key methods:

1. The 16-8 model: This is where you fast for 16 hours, usually overnight and only eat within a window of eight hours. For example, if you start eating at 12pm and finish at 8pm you don’t eat again until 12pm the next day, effectively skipping a meal.

2. The 5-2 model: This is where you eat as you normally would for five days and then reduce your calories to around 500 for two days, taking your amount of total weekly calories down.

Of course, the risk is that you may overeat during your eating windows on both methods, so it’s important to remember that it is still about your total intake of calories. Be aware that many people who are strict in the week can undo the progress they have made if they consume excessively on weekends.

How are all these methods similar?   That’s right, they put you in a calorie deficit. The key to success, once again, is to choose the method that best suits you.

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See you next time.

What's the best approach for fat loss?

As there are so many books, diets and advice around this subject online, I won’t go into any specifics here, but which one works? The answer is… all of them.  That is, as long as you keep to the rules.

Let’s keep it simple by talking portion control. The ideal approach is to make steady changes with diet and fat loss sustainability in mind. This way you make changes to habits, as well as to your body composition.  Progress may be slow, but it will be consistent, and I believe that that’s the best approach for your health and your relationship with your food.   And, most importantly, you must be prepared for it to take time.

But what if you want faster results? Again, we all know what we need to do; create a bigger calorie deficit. The greater the deficit, the faster the results.

Here are a few things to consider when going into a more extreme restriction:

1.       You will be very hungry.

2.       You will feel tired and lethargic.

3.       You will have low energy levels for exercise.

4.       You will be more likely to crave junk food and make bad food choices.

5.       You are likely to yoyo.

So yes, you may get there faster, but you will have to deal with all of the above.

And then a time will come when you need to do something a little slower, by which I mean that when you start increasing your calorific intake, you will need to do it S L O W L Y.  If you take a quick and dramatic approach, it’s likely that you’ll end up at step 5.  So instead, I recommend developing new habits for life and taking your time.

I haven’t mentioned exercise on this week’s blog but I’ll cover this on another day.

See you next time.

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