Did you know that regularly missing meals can scupper your weight loss results?

Most people think and the press would have you believe that weight loss is a simple process of calories in and calories out but this is simply not true. If it were half of my client base would never have called or emailed me or even looked for my services.

I know lots of people who miss meals to lose weight and others who miss meals due to busy schedules or bad planning. I know all of these people because they are trying to lose weight, but most are struggling and many are moving in the wrong direction.

But why?

Why are they putting on weight or at best staying stable?

This is a question that I’m asked by these people all the time?

I want to share with you the reasons why, why people starve themselves and missing meal only to find that the scales are not showing them what they want to see.

To explore why calorie restriction does not work we have to look at our position on the planet and our evolutionary path to it.

We are the most dominant species on the planet, we are number 1 the top of the food chain. To get to this point we have under gone millions of years of evolution. During this time our ancestors have been through some real hard times such as ice ages, droughts and famines. To allow us to survive the trials and tribulations that nature throws at us we have evolved mechanisms to help us to cope.

When it comes to a lack of food the body has the ability to reduce its metabolic rate which means it can reduce the amount of calories that it uses for the various functions that are required for you to survive.

Your body also looks to store food so that you have reserves in case the famine is going to be prolonged due to seasonal conditions or natural disasters.

Missing meals and or dramatically reducing your calorie consumption leads to your body thinking that food is scarce and that you are in a period of famine.

So it slows down your metabolism and stores the food that you eat for later.

The next problem that you are going to face on low calorie diets or he regular missing of meals is the resumption of your normal eating pattern.

It will take a couple of days for your body to realise that you are no longer in a state of famine and food is now readily available again. During this time your body is going to store everything that you consume, especially as your metabolism is slow and you do not need the extra calories that you are now consuming. You therefore pile the pounds back on often becoming heavier then you were to start with!

It’s important for you to eat 3 meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner to make sure that your metabolism is running well and you are supplying it with all the nutrients that it needs.

Over the next couple of posts I’m going to talk more about the problems of low calorie diets or missing meal and I’m going to give you strategies to overcome your problems with meals.

The regular problems that clients bring to me are;

• I don’t feel like breakfast in the morning / it makes me feel sick / I’m not hungry
• I don’t have time for meal X because Y

So, eat 3 meal a day!

And I’ll be back with some more pitfalls and solutions for you.

Committed to your success

Keith

Many of you have been in even though you were sore. Well done and kudos to you!!!

Many wondered if you were doing the right thing and I’m sure that many more of you avoided coming training. Although it’s a little counter intuitive research has show that it is fine to train on stiff and sore muscles if they are suffering from D.O.M.S.

D.O.M.S stands for delayed onset muscle soreness and can last from 3 to 5 days. Many of you know this already!

The studies have shown 2 things;

1. Full metabolic recovery occurs within 48 hours even if still sore

2. Training on muscles suffering from DOMS does not affect their recovery time

As far as weight loss in concerned you want to be back in training the very next day so that you keep stoking up your metabolism and burn twice as much fat. If you do a training session and then take the next 5 day off you are never going to get the metabolism of its ass and doing its job. FAT BURNING!

The painful truth is the more you train the less you’re going to suffer in the long run as your body adjust and therefore gets used to it.

For myself I rate the quality of the training session on how stiff and sore I am. If I’m not it was not a good session and not as productive as it could have been.

What can you do to relieve the pain?

Many people have asked me what they can do to relieve the symptoms. The honest answer is that your body has to do it in its own time but you can help it to do its best job by doing the following;

1. Eat good quality foods

2. Make sure that your meals are based around good quality protein

3. Drink plenty of fresh clean water

4. Plenty or rest and good quality sleep

5. Have a hot/warm bath

6. Light massage of the area

These will either bring you light short term relief (bath or massage) or will help the repair process, therefore shortening it slightly.

See you at the next boot camp session

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the team

For my first post I thought that I would tell you a little about myself and the differences between Personal Trainers.

The Fitness Industry is a fantastic industry so many different approaches and so many avenues to go down. In this article I (Amy Black), am going to be talking about my journey to Absolute Training and the difference between Personal Trainers and Renter Friends. These are two completely different things as i will explain, as well as give you a little backround knowledge on myself.

As some of you may know i have just started working with Absolute Training, very different to what I was used to. Do I like it or prefer it? Well you’ll just have to wait and see……!!

I left school at 16 which did get frowned upon slightly by friends but of course I just wanted to earn money so I got a job as a leisure assistant at the Oxford Belfry hotel cleaning the gym and working on reception. I had a lot of fun to and also got qualified as an NVQ level 2 fitness instructor and that’s where the journey begins.

I left to work in Cannons now Nuffield Health. It was like a dream a massive gym and a 20 metre pool, classes, inductions, health assessments loads to do.

Well for the first few months.

Then it was standing on the gym floor for about seven hours a day cleaning. Have you ever walked into a gym and seen fitness instructers look like anywhere else would be better than where they are now?

Well that’s how i felt. I went on to my level 3 in advanced training to allow me to do Personal Training. I had been there a year and started to build a client base but things weren’t making any sense to me. On my course we got told machines are rubbish leisure centres aren’t doing the right job, trainers don’t train people properly. My head was just in a whirl wind I’m being told so many different things. I was looking around and was seeing clients achieve nothing although they had been with there trainer for two or three years.

Is that possible?

Trainers were taking their clients from machine to machine each week counting to 15. In my head I was thinking ‘surely this cant be my future job’ ‘Do I want to do this’. The answer was NO!!

Yet another Health assessment to do ‘GREAT’ but little did I know this was the health assessment that would change my future. I had the Clare that we all no and love.

 As two normal girls we got chatting about the industry and hormonal issues, from that health assessment I met Keith. I got to know him more when I attended the Personal Nutrition Course where I learnt heaps and felt so positive about life in general.

WOW food has a massive impact on our lives, something I’m sure I’ll be writing about in the future.

We got chatting and then the next thing i know I’m looking after his clients for a week while he is in America.

I have to admit there were times when I freaked and didn’t want to do it or felt I couldn’t but I just took a deep breath and got on with it this then led me to working with Keith and Clare, becoming part of the Absolute Training Team.

‘I’ll be ok I’ve done Personal Training before,’ or so i thought.

But in actual fact i had been a renter friend not really taking an interest in there posture or lifestyle I was there to talk to them have a laugh and watch them exercise.

Now I have people with injuries, stress issues, poor posture and muscle imbalances. Gone are the days where I ignored that, it has to be dealt with to get any results. AHHHHHHHHH it can be a complicated nightmare!

More days come where I thought I can’t do this im out of my depth. But by watching Keith listening and learning and discussion I have built on the solid foundation of my qualifications, so much information so fast!  

The early mornings are hard although I am getting there. We are working with real people not lycra gym bunnies, people with real worries and injuries. I have learnt that you need to start with the inside before the outside gets focused on.

Building real relationships with the clients working together to help build a better quality of life. That is why I can get quite tiered because you build a relationship with that person and you can go away still thinking of ways to help them. No client is ever forgotten about.

So The Differences between a Personal Trainer and a Renter Friend:

# Renter friends think its all about the exercise.

# Personal trainers build a relationship and coach’s people with all aspects that affect health.

# Your health and your results is the most important thing for a Personal Trainer

# Renter friends have lots of machines

# Personal Training is not ‘JUST A JOB’ we have a passion to making you feel fantastic inside and out.

The answer to which one do I prefer…..

Well a renter friend is a whole lot easier but who wants easy, so of course there is no doubt it is working with Absolute training being a Personal Trainer!!!

Hope to see you soon

Amy

It’s the sprinter, did you get it right?

On average a sprinter is between 5 and 6% body fat and the marathon runner is about 14%.

Now this gives you some clues as to the best way to train to reduce your body fat %, decreasing your weight and giving you a toned, strong body.

Knowing this also means that you don’t need to run/walk for mega long periods of time each day to get your desired body shape. Short sharp explosive work is far more effective as stripping the fat off you then long slow (boring) endurance based exercise. You could be in and out in 40 minutes having had the most effective work out of your life.

But how do you do this?

Well one way is to use a professional fitness team such as us the Absolute Training team and train one on one doing short 30/40 minutes cost effective workouts, saving you time and money but getting you the results that you want.

If one on one is too daunting or you have budgetary concerns, than your best bet is the Fit Body Bootcamp. You will still be working with qualified personal trainers and they will guide you through the exercises that are required to get you the figure that you need.

If you can’t get to either of these you need to ask you gym team about the correct exercises - exercises such as mat flipping/ running, single leg press, dead lift, clean and press etc. If this is not an option you could try the killer workout that we have videoed for you, which you can find featured just on the right hand side of this page.

Committed to your success

Keith

P.S well done to Bruce for doing the Killer work out the other evening! Awesome!

Have you ever noticed how doing sit ups or crunches never seem to give people a six pack no matter how many they do. You may be one of the people who are experiencing this problem.

For most people it makes sense to them that if they exercise a specific muscle surely they should lose the fat from that area….. They are often surprised to find that 1 year of doing sit ups later they can do 1000, have a bad back but still have not shifted the extra weight on their stomach that they were hoping to.

You CAN’T spot tone!

I know, it’s a complete bugger but your body just doesn’t work like that. I want you to think about it in a different way. Think of your muscle as engines and your fat cells as the fuel tanks. For good consistent weight loss you need to make all of your engine work so that they all have increased fuel demands…. Let me explain;

If your arm is working hard and requires more fuel to keep working, fat will be broken down from where ever you store it, let’s say for instance round your waist. The fat is transported by the blood to the liver the liver turns it into glycogen and transports the fuel to the arm where it is used to keep the arm moving.

If all your muscle require more energy the fuel (fat) is taken from your reserves to feed them.

Working one muscle or muscle group like you abdominals is not going to use up enough calories to make a difference to the fat reserves around your body. Your body will also choose which fuel (fat) site to take the fuel from, therefore no spot toning.

The best exercises to use to burn the fat from your body are those that require your whole body to do them. Exercises such as dead lifts, cleans, walking lunges, lunges with dumbbell presses, pulls and raises. These exercises burn up tones of calories and require you body access its fuel stores.

At the fit body boot camp we use exercises that get some increasable results. This is because they are full body, full on, fully committed exercises. This is not to say that they are only for fit people, they aren’t. In your free body diagnostic we will identify your level of fitness and injury risk so that in every boot camp session you can work to your maximum potential with the exercises that are right for you.

The fit body boot camps combination of full body movement and interval training we will get you the results that you are looking for.

To see a video of the Sunday boot campers then click on the link below

www.fitbodybootcamp.co.uk

And then sign up and join in the fun!

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the Team

Guaranteeing your results

One of the best things about the fit body boot camp is the way the instructors guarantee your results…. Yep that’s right they say results or your money back!

But how can they do this?

Consistency and regularity are the keys to success here. Firstly you have to train a minimum of 3 time per week…. Yep that’s a minimum!

But you could train more get incredible value for you money and supercharge your Boot Camp results! 

You need to follow the diet plan and then there is the goal setting and coaching that you will also need to do to make sure that you get your mind into the right place and ready for results.

If you put all of these things together to have a very… no an incredibly powerful training system and strategies. Many companies or individual trainers focus on the exercise, producing really good workouts, but this leaves out some of the most important factors.

I know that you have heard the saying, ‘you are what you eat’, well, there is no truer statement. Your body literally builds itself from the foods that you put into it. So to improve your health it’s important to place the right nutrients in to the body to be assimilated.

The other important factor is mind set. The difference between first and second place in the Olympics or World Championships is often down to mind set, the total and utter belief that you will win.

Did you see Usain Bolt the other evening break the world record again the other evening? He had won before the start gun, you should have seen how relaxed he was before the race, he was always going to run a great one as he was not tense. If you compare him to Tyson Gay, his closest rival, you’ll see that Tyson was wound so tight it’s surprising he was able to run at all, but a great testament to his mental toughness that he still managed to run a national best. Awesome! 

 Many people that I work with have failed before they have even begun as they don’t believe that they can get the results that they are looking for.

Belief is key to success!

I’m going to talk a lot more on all of these subjects over the next couple of weeks, so tune in and get some results straight off the page!

1. Eat right

2. Believe in yourself

3. Consistency in exercise and number 1 and 2

Committed to your results

Keith

We are seeing bootcamp  springing up all over the place in parks and school grounds throughout the summer this year.

People doing bootcamp exercise of all shapes, ages and genders is a great advert to the young to get involved in exercise but even better advert to the population as a whole to get out and do something positive about their health, fitness or weight loss issues.

A bootcamp is a great way to work with qualified personal trainers without the associated expense. For example at the 4 min fit body bootcamp you can train 3 times a week for £99.95 per month with their personal training team constantly watching, encouraging and motivating you to do it correctly and safely but still work hard and get results. If you were to train with a personal trainers one on one 3 time per week, it would cost you somewhere between £450 and £780 per month!

But why is it such a craze at the moment and why are so many people doing it?

I think I will talk about that more tomorrow….

Until tomorrow!

Committed to your success

Keith Tucker