diet Archives - Crawley Fitness

Mar 09

0

Four Steps to Permanent, Sustainable Fat Loss

By JohnJarvis | Exercise and Fitness, Weight Loss | No Comments

Most people approach Fat Loss wrong.

In fact they do it backwards.

Then wonder why things aren’t changing.

You see most people think it’s all about exercise. They think getting down the gym three or four times per week will cut it. And while it will help — it’s the thin end of the wedge. Getting to the gym isn’t where the magic happens and it isn’t the reason weight just “falls off”.

Let me give you an example:

You train three times per week and you burn 400 calories per session (… forget all those claims about burning over 1,000 calories per hour because it’s usually non-sense). Well that’s a grand total of 1200 calories expended per week.

Break that down and 1,200 calories per week is 171 calories per day in the red.

Here’s the best bit…

That’s roughly two and half digestive biscuits.

So if you have a sweet tooth and like a little treat with your lunch or a dessert in the evening you could smash that 171 calories just by tidying up what you eat.

Take the sugar out of your tea, get rid of processed foods and sauces.

It’s not rocket science (… although if you need a gentle nudge in the right direction we can help)

It’s a lot easier and lot a cheaper to just tidy up your diet than it is to haul your butt down the gym and push yourself once you get there.

And that’s what I mean when I say most people approach weight lose backwards.

They think about the exercise first and foremost… treating it like it’s some kind of magic cure or worse still they actually go and look for a magic cure (… cue slimming tablets and shakes). Which is the single worst thing you can do if permanent change is what you’re after.

Our approach here is different.

Sure we believe in diet and we believe in exercise but we prefer to say eating and training.

Because you’re going to continue to eat (… and not diet) for the rest of your life.

And exercise is random. Training has a purpose. There is an end goal and milestones you can celebrate along the way.

Our personal trainers have a four step approach to fat loss:

Eat right
Train right
Social support
Accountability

Hopefully you understand 1 and 2 a little better now.

It’s about eating and training. We can help you with that.

Social support, well that’s the reason weight watchers and slimming world are so popular. It’s a group of people who get together and support each other. Then weigh in weekly (… before binging and hiding the evidence) for the pat on the back.

And accountability.

Well that’s about having to look someone in the eye and tell them you’ve hand a sneaky chocolate bar (… or been really good and getting a pat on the back).

Accountability is where you have someone who’s going to be waiting for you in the gym at a specific time on a specific day where you’re going to make sure your food has been in check for the week (… we recommend all our clients use a food diary) before working through your training programme (… the programme that makes you look and feel great, not just ‘skinny’).

There you have it.

Fat loss in four easy steps — with a little bit of an ‘a-ha’ moment — on why you can’t out train a bad diet.

If you’d like to have a chat to one of our trainers to find out how you can kick start your new lifestyle click here to find out more.

Jan 02

0

How to get in the best shape of your life in 2015…

By JohnJarvis | Exercise and Fitness, Gym Crawley, Personal Training Crawley, Weight Loss | No Comments

It’s that time of year when people are setting goals, making (and breaking) New Year’s resolutions and keeping their fingers crossed for a BIGGER better year than they had in 2014.

And as cheesy as the “New Year New You!” slogans might sound and as cliched as they might be…

There really is nothing bad about sitting back, reflecting and doing something to make 2015 a better year than lasts BUT you need to do something more than just reflect, think and make a note in your mind.

That’s where folk fall down and that is why they fail.

Instead of doing, they think.

Instead of acting, they talk.

Which all leads to 2015 (potentially) being the exact same as 2014.

So What’s the Solution?

It’s super-simple (like most solutions are) and there is no magic secret or push button solution.

All you got to do is Turn Up and start doing something.

Forget thinking and making a resolution to lose a stone, two stone or 5 stone in 2015.

Instead set yourself a goal to sort your diet out and eat healthy. It all starts with your eating (let’s not call it a diet) and making sure you make long term, permanent and sustainable plans that mean you lose weight and keep it off. Eating that doesn’t just help you look better it makes you perform better too. Eat good, look good and feel good!

Instead of thinking about getting to the gym four, five or six days a week just make a small commitment to getting there twice a week. Then turn it into three days and add a little walk here and there. Start with a small, simple change and then scale it.

Lastly (but arguably the most important) is social support and accountability which is why personal training is so popular. It’s not just about eating and training… it’s about eating, training, having support and someone to tell (or confess to) when you’ve eaten that bar of Dairy Milk or been a little naughty and eaten an entire pizza for desert.

Social support and accountability are perhaps two of the biggest and most neglected factors ‘we’ forget when it comes to losing weight and getting in shape.

You Must Start Now…

Losing weight and getting in the best shape of your life is simple.

Turn up, do the work and keep it consistent.

That means eating right and training right.

Keep it realistic, keep it sustainable and keep it consistent.

Procrastination is a dream killer which is one of the reasons our fitness classes and personal training sessions are so popular. You book in and you turn up. Then let the pace and energy of the class pull you along and get your body moving!

That’s the first step sorted.

The next biggie is finding social support and accountability.

Finding people (ideally a partner or spouse) who’ll get behind and help you out when times get touch, when you need to be kicked off the sofa or to stop you raiding the fridge when late night boredom sets in and you start to eat for the sake of it.

Social support and accountability are big factors. Even if you want to ‘go it alone’ find someone, even if it’s online who’ll help you out and be there for you. Fact.

And that really is it.

It’ll get you in the fittest and best looking shape of your life and it’s something our team has been doing for close to 20 years now.

Dec 09

0

How to Burn Even More Calories without Exercising More

By JohnJarvis | Crawley BJJ, Personal Training Crawley, Weight Loss | No Comments

Like it or loathe it — weight loss is largely down to creating a negative energy balance.

Sure — a calories isn’t just a calories — 300 calories from donuts are very different from 300 calories of vegetables but ultimately if you want to lose weight you have to create a negative energy balance.

Less in. More out.

While most of us attribute that to exercise and diet — move more and eat less — there are two other very simple, very important factors that will make a difference.

The first is N.E.A.T or non-exercise related thermogenesis.

How to Increase Your N.E.A.T.

N.E.A.T. is burning calories that are not from exercise, eating (yes, your burn calories from eating) and sleeping (yep, you burn calories even when you sleep).

It might be the fidgeting you do at work, taking the stairs instead of the lift and moving around more.

While the amount of calories burned from N.E.A.T. might not sound like a majority factor remember exercise is often as little as 15-30% of your daily calories needs.

A small increase in your daily N.E.A.T. can and will have an impact.

And often it’s N.E.A.T. that makes naturally skinny people, skinny.

Increase Your T.E.F.

T.E.F. is the Thermogenic Effect of Food and can account for 10% of your daily calorie expenditure.

In a nutshell the food you eat can and does impact the calories you burn, with protein having the highest T.E.F.

So in a nutshell, eat more protein and you’ll burn more calories.

One of the biggest problems with Western Diets is that we all eat too many carbohydrates and not enough protein.

So most folk don’t eat enough protein (you should try to squeeze in lean protein at every meal, including breakfast) which will a) make you feel fuller b) ensure your protein needs are met and c) help you burn more calories.

That’s what you call a win-win-win situation!

Do You Want to Start Burning More Calories?

If you’re serious about losing weight — and more specifically fat — then the surest ways to do this is by:

Increasing your metabolism
Increasing your N.E.A.T.
Increasing your T.E.F.
Exercising more
And eating the right kind foods

Five things our training and nutritional suggestions can and will help you improve.

To find out more about our daily fitness classes or personal training for weight loss fill in the enquiry form on this page or call our gym on 01293 552 511.

We’re a friendly bunch, here to help and when you get in touch you’ll be making the first and most important step to changing how you look, feel and perform.

See you in the gym (hopefully)!

Nov 20

0

The 20% of your efforts that mean 80% of your weight loss….

By JohnJarvis | Personal Training Crawley, Weight Loss | No Comments

Back in the 1600s an Italian by the name ‘Pareto’ realised that 80% of the results you get come from 20% of your work and effort. It’s a strange phenomena that seems to crop up all and that includes burning fat and losing weight.

There is the one thing that leads to 80% of your results…

And there’s the ‘other’ thing that leads to just 20%…

What’s the 80%…?

I kid you not … you can 80% of the ‘way’ there by just focusing on your diet.

Imagine this…

You work out two days a week, train hard and burn 600 calories per session (… if you’re lucky, most folk don’t work nearly hard enough to achieve this) leaving you 1200 calories in the red — not bad.

Or you could tidy your diet up just 200 calories per day and you’re 1400 calories in the red without stepping any where a gym or working up the slightest of sweat.

Now sure both work but the problem with the gym solution is most folk treat it as an excuse to eat some naughty food, have a treat and indulge a little.

Just two biscuits with your cup of tea and you’re gone from 1200 calories in the red to 900.

And it’s very easy to let it slip further.

Proof that tidying up your diet is as (if not more) important than exercise and exercising more.

That might sound a little weird coming from a gym who like to see new members but truth be told helping our members eat better AND train harder WITH additional social support really is why we can help our members and personal training clients succeed where other methods have failed.

The Exercise and Diet Double-Whammy…

While you can get 80% towards where you want to be with just diet the harsh reality is discipline often gets in the way. Or rather a lack of discipline gets in the way, holds us back.

That same lack of discipline coupled with the horrendous food marketing we’re bombarded with daily can — for many of us — make looking how we want to look a near impossibility.

And that’s where exercise help.

While I don’t have the papers to reference, there is evidence to support the fact that people who train also eat well and stick with their diet for longer periods of time.

And, there’s more.

When people diet they typically lose weight but it’s weight — not fat — they lose.

What does that mean? It means they lose muscle mass and they lose fat and potentially end up skinnier without any really shape of definition. It’s what most people mean when they say toning – that’s the nice shape having muscle gives us.

If you have no muscle then you look like ‘what you are’ skin covering bone and that’s not a good look.

The right combination of the right exercises with the right diet on the other hand leaves you looking fitter, healthier and feeling good too.

Not to mention the fact that people with more muscle burn more calories (they have a higher metabolism) so it’s a win-win-win situation on many fronts.

Interest in Personal Training?

While personal training isn’t for others (some people prefer a small group or class), a one-to-one session is the quickest way to get in shape, lose weight, burn body fat and build a better looking, healthy body.

Our gym in Crawley is unique in that we’re not a mainstream commercial gym.

We don’t have station upon station of cardio machines.

We don’t have meat-heads who’ll stare at you when you walk into their domain and we know all of our members by name.

Our gym is a cool place to train, it’s super-friendly and we get great results.

To find out more, get in touch.

Enter your name and telephone number in the enquiry box on the side of this page and we’ll give you a call back to talk through your training goals and get you started as quick as possible.

Or you can call us on 01293 552 511 and if we don’t answer (because we’re probably training someone) leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

See you in the gym!

Jun 20

0

The Rules of Dieting

By JohnJarvis | Exercise and Fitness | No Comments

Let’s forget dieting for a moment and (instead) just call it eating.

We don’t diet and exercise here – we eat and we train.

Eating is what we do and it’s something we’re working to improve – literally – one bite at a time.

Below are five rules for eating better and creating a NEW improved and permanent diet that lasts (of course if you need help our team of personal trainers are on hand to offer training and nutrition help).

Rule #1 If it doesn’t go bad, don’t eat it!

What I’m taking about is the fact that real food go bad. Fruit and vegetables start to decompose and go off. Microwaveable meals on the other had – don’t.

Food that goes bad is what our grandparents just called food. Nowadays it’s something we have to go out of our way to buy and eat. We have too many alternatives, too many preserved, processed and ready made foods to eat.

Don’t buy processed and prepared meals (this includes many breakfast cereals) eat good old fashioned food from raw ingredients. Porridge (for example) is just oats. It’s not a concoction of ingredients and additives that have been created in a factory and boxed for us to eat.

That’s the most important rule out of the way!

Rule #2 – Eat until you’re 80% full

For the majority of us the problem (or the reason we’re overweight) is because we eat the wrong kind of food – go back and read rule #1 again – and second, we eat too much.

What’s the right size portion?

Well that’s different for everyone but one thing we can all do is STOP eating when we’re 80% full!

Unfortunately we’ve all been educated by our parents to clean our plates and eat everything.

Eating real food actually makes us feel fuller that eating the equivalent amount of processed food. It’s called satiety and processed foods don’t tell us we’re full in the same way.

Rule #3 Eat lean protein at every meal

Our body is constantly turning over protein. What does that mean?

It’s constantly breaking down and building back the tissue (including muscle in our body) so it’s important we supplement the process by adding sufficient protein into our diets.

In addition to supplying these all important building blocks (some of which can only be got from food) by consuming protein at every meal can help improve your metabolism, reduce your cardiovascular risk, improve your weight loss profile AND lead to a higher metabolic rate (more info).

It’s win-win-win when it comes to adding lean protein at every meal.

Rule #3 Eat fruit and vegetables at every meal

And yep, that includes breakfast!

Now the UK government have been great in funding the Change4Life scheme that promoted having your five a day but it’s better still to start seeing them push one step further and talk about seven.

Sound a lot?

Maybe it does but first remember that fruit and vegetables are typically higher in nutrients and lower in calories. And while fruit does contain a lot of sugar (so you should focus more on increasing your veg intake) the benefits of all the cancer fighting, free-radical destroying properties of fruit and veg make it well worth while.

Plus you can eat a lot of veg to bulk your meals, fill you up and withing worrying about the extra calories that extra spud would have added.

More cancer fighting fruit and veg please (ideally 2 at every meal)!

Rule #3 Add in healthy fats

It’s sad that we associate being fat, sub-cutaneous fat (the stuff under you skin) and visceral fat (the stuff around your organs) with fat from food.

Fat isn’t bad for us (in the same way as carbohydrate and protein isn’t bad) it’s just another key ingredient for a healthy diet.

If you needed any proof of this then how about the trillions of cells in our body that are all made up with a cell membrane of fatty acids? And how about the fact that our hormones rely on fat?

What you need is to understand and identify what healthy fats are AND to balance your consumption of monounsaturated, polyunsaturates and saturates (all while avoiding transaturated fat).

The problem is we eat too much of one kind of fat (saturated fat) and if you don’t believe me then see what the NHS have to say here.

What you need is a healthy balance of the right fat types for optimum nutrition.

Rule #5 Earn your carbs

Our Western diet is too carb heavy and (when I think of my mother) I remember having lasagne with potatoes – a heavy carb dish with a side-serving of carbs.

Too many.

We need carbs, they are fuel and without them your body will often turn to protein and start breaking down your muscle tissue in order to fuel itself.

What we all need to do is eating less carbs and at the right time.

The right time depends from person to person (some of us tolerate carbohydrates better than others) but as a general rule it’s good to earn them and eat them on the days we’re working out.

The best time of all is right after a workout, when the cells in your body are primed and ready.

Eating the right amount of carbohydrates at the right time is something we discuss with all our clients during our personal training sessions.

It’s one piece of the puzzle.

Helping people change their eating habits, one habit at a time so that instead of short term gains and faddy eating we help people create long term, sustainable eating habits that help them lose weight and stay healthy.

If you’d like to find out about our personal training, exercise classes or nutrition help them either either your name and telephone number in the enquiry box on this page or call us on 01293 552 511.