So you live a healthy lifestyle, you exercise 3 times or more a week either at the gym or an exercise class such as a Bootcamp. You eat healthily, eating protein and vegetables and small amounts of low G.I carbohydrates you let yourself go a little at the weekend with some processed foods and alcohol, BUT still the fat stays!

There does not seem to be any reason for it. FAT should be melting off you. Below I have 7 reasons that it may not be shifting. It’s important to get the lifestyle basics right as getting these wrong can ruin your weight loss efforts, leaving you de-motivated and depressed.

So here we go, the 7 basics that you need to get right on top of your exercise and diet.

STRESS No. 1

Stress can be a massive barrier when it comes to weight loss. I do know people who lose weight when they are stressed. These people usually lose their appetite. This often leads then to putting more eight on than before the stress started due to the shutting down of their metabolism.

Other people use food to comfort them in their stressful situation. People tend to comfort themselves with high calorie foods often high in sugar foods that turn quickly to FAT. This type of food increase the stress on your system and in the long term leaves you more tired and even less motivated!

On a deeper level continued stress plays havoc with you hormones. This in turn plays havoc with your blood sugar making it harder to lose weight and increasing your risk of getting ill.

Lack of sleep

How much sleep do you get? Are you getting 8 hours or are you getting more like 5 or 6?

Ask yourself why you are getting so few hours of sleep. Is it because your life is so full of things that you work right up to the moment you go to bed or are you watching TV when you should have switch the box off and gone to bed. ‘Just until the next adverts, just till the end of this one, I’ll be ok tomorrow I’m used to it’….. What do you say to yourself?

Whether you’re busy or watching TV sleep is a very important to your health. It ties back in with stress and hormone disruption and therefore blood sugar level and your immune system.

Sleep is also important for other reasons as both physical and metal repair happens at this time. Between 10pm and 2am is when your body concentrates on physical repair of the body. After 2am the body focuses on mental repair. A lack of sleep means that you are missing out on parts of the repair system of your body.

Whether you’re watching TV or busy working, not getting enough sleep places STRESS on your body, which disrupts hormone balance, blood sugar levels and immune function. The impact of this will have to wait for another newsletter or blog as you can write whole books on the subject.

Just remember, when you’re tired you are more likely to reach for sugary snack as a pick you up!

Emotions

Do you comfort eat?

Emotions have a big part to play in weight loss and weight gain! Arguing with a loved one, bad day at work, your friend have lost weight again while you struggle or are you pissed off with yourself for failing at your diet again and pigging out!

When you’re depressed, run down or unmotivated do you comfort eat?

Comfort eating does makes you feel better but for how long, 5 mins? Not only do you have the bad day going around in your head you now have the added extra of the guilt of having the comfort food and failing on your diet again! You are also likely to suffer sugar blues on top of feeling bad as 20 to 60 minutes later your blood sugar level drops leaving you with feelings of hunger, irritability and depression. It must be time for another sugary treat!

Low Self Esteem

The way you feel about yourself has a massive impact on the way you act and what you say to yourself. Do you have more respect for others then you do for yourself, care more about other people’s health than your own?

You would never say the things you say to yourself to other people. So why do you think it is ok for you to speak to yourself in that way?

The more you say these things to yourself the more they become true as you will find ways to prove it to yourself! This will lead you to making the wrong choices regarding your food, exercise and lifestyle.

Boredom

I bet you have noticed that when you are busy and focused on the job in hand, you never think about or feel the need to eat! BUT, when you are lazing around and bored you feel hungry and the need to pick, the chocolate or biscuit tin calling your name!

Just like with emotional eating your boredom only subsides for the amount of time it takes to eat the treat, as soon as you have finished your back to thinking about the nibbles again. Often when you start this type of nibbling you don’t stop until there is nothing left, when the whole packet has been consumed!

Social events

Social engagements are one of my client’s favourite excuses for not sticking to a diet plan. Many see it as the ultimate get out!

Not so my friends!

Treating yourself at every opportunity is never going to be conducive to your health and weight loss. I’m not saying that you should never treat yourself but if you a regular social eater then be selective.

• Is it your birthday?
• Is it Christmas?
• A special calibration to mark a promotion or an achievement?

If the answer is no then why are you acting like a glutton? Everybody should have a cheat day but I know people who go out to dinner 3 – 4 times a week and go out for lunch 3 – 4 times a week.

Again I’m not saying don’t go, I’m saying pick your meals more carefully with an eye on your waist and your health. I normally ask restaurants to change things on my plate and very rarely have any problem; I find that 9 times out of 10 they are very accommodating.

The 7^th Barrier

There is only one barrier left to cover today and it’s the hardest one so I hope that you are sitting comfortably. It’s the hardest thing to admit as we tend to hide behind other barriers as excuses but really they all come down to one thing……… YOU!

All the barriers above lead to one thing, the wrong food choices. You are the one making the choices, so the only barrier is YOU!

You can lose weight, improve your health get fit have boundless energy as you have the choice of what to eat and whether to exercise.

Sometimes there are underlying health problems that can get in the way of weight loss. problems that do not allow easy weight loss, but these are for another day!

Committed to your success,

Don’t let YOU get in YOUR way

Keith and Amy

This session was awesome they all worked so hard and were so focused I’m sure some of them lost a pound or two just in this workout!!!!

I know that some of the moves are a little extreme but if you look closely you’ll find that everyone is working to their own ability.

Our boot campers build their exercise complexity carefully over time. We always offer options for people who are new to exercise or have injuries as you will find on the Bootcamp website, just check out the testimonials and then come meet the people!

Enjoy 52 seconds of other people doing the hard work!

Fast Tube by Casper

This stuff work and works fast so come and try out the Bootcamp. Click here to find out how you could have 2 weeks of training for £1 with us!

Click Below;

Boot camp Berkhamsted

It was awesome but I’m not writing to give you a case of the green eyed monsters, I want to make you think about your eating habits?

Clare had too much food on her plate for her to finish so she asked if I wanted any.

“No I’m just fine,” I replied.

“Keith, there are children staving in Africa,” she replied in an almost monotone voice.

“And your dying to have a heart attack or diabetes,” I replied.

Clare blinked slowly and then a light went on inside…. “You have got to turn that into a blog!” she said!

So here we are….

There are children staving in Africa and other countries for the want of a good meal but there are also hundreds of thousands if people in developed countries dying from diseases of over eating every day.

In the Boot camp, Personal Training sessions and the Personal Nutrition course food is a major subject day in and day out. Not only do we discuss what we should and should not eat but also our psychological and behavioural attitudes to food.

There are many things that come up time and time again such as depression and comfort eating, the feeling of loving or looking after your loved ones or demonstrating your love for them through food treats, but the biggest one is the inability to leave food on your plate due to a few simple words that have been said to you as children time and time again.

You have to finish your dinner, there are children staving in Africa!!!!

If there was a way of measuring the health effects of a few simple words I’m willing to bet that this sentence is one of the most deadly!

Think about it!

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the Team

P.s 3 body fat scales sold already!!!

To Find out more and get yours click here

We have acquired 11 sets of Tanita body fat scales.   “What’s this and why would I care? I hear you think…..!”

These are the type of scales that we and large national gym’s use in their business to do their health assessments and to track weight loss and body fat progress. If you’re into your weight loss or health and fitness they are a very important tool to keep you focused on your fat loss goal.

Track progress, write your own diet plans

We use them to track progress, write diet plans and gain critical health information about our client health status and weight loss progress.

Understand your body Fat %

These scales will enable you to track your weight, (yes i know Keith, i don’t know if you’ve noticed but any scales will do that!), they will measure the % of your body that’s fat and the % that’s muscle. This is far more important than knowing how much you weigh as lean tissue weight’s 3 times as much as fat! If your training hard this will enable you to track the changes in body composition. This is very important as some people do not lose weight when training but they do change shape and change body composition.

You can also get fat % readings for individual parts of your body such as your right leg, left arms or torso.

Discover the amount of fat stored around you organs and therefore your health risk!

Visceral fat is the fat that is stored around your organs and therefore directly relates to your health. If you score highly here you know you need to take some action to improve your health!

Would you like to know how many calories you should consume a day? These scales will give you an estimate helping you to formulate a diet plan to suit your needs!

Bone and Water %

These scales will also give you bone %’s and hydration % give you the tools you need to make the right health decisions.

They are quick and easy to use… they need to be, you try retesting all the boot-campers on the last Sunday of each month! They have got to work fast.

Do not worry if you are not technically minded as they have a comprehensive instruction manual and I use them every day! For me to use something electrical it’s needs to be idiot proof, you just ask Clare what I’m like with technology!

When I brought these scale I paid £179.99 and if you buy them from John Lewis, Tanita, this is what you would pay. We have pick up 11 sets for Only £125.

Do you want a £55 discount?

Even if you wait for the January sales you’ll not get them at £55 off the RRP.

So who’s in?

• Would your weight loss be easier if you had a professional tool to help you?
• Is it time you used a professional tool to help you set your goals realistically?
• Would you achieve your goals if you were able to track and measure your success properly and understand what happening inside your body?
• Who wants a major discount that normally only comes if you have buying power of a large organisation?

If you would like one of the 11 sets then click the link below and you’ll be able to pop in a pick them up or we will hand deliver them if you are local to us!

Tanita scales for awesome weight loss results for £125.00

BUY NOW

If you would like to pay in instalments please contact Absolute Training on 07971 809 761 thanks

If you have not started getting into shape don’t leave it any later. The magazines with the headlines flat stomach in 2 week or a 6 pack in 6 days is lying to you…!

I have started my own summer regime, Monday was drop sets, Tuesday 10 rounds of hard boxing and today metabolic circuit training! If it wasn’t for the stiff and sore muscles I’d feeling fighting fit!!!

Our boot camps are about more than just weight loss and fitness this weekend was a big weekend for 12 of our campers!

On the Friday the 25^th a group of excited and slightly anxious Absolute Bootcamp Berkhamsted Bootcampers embarked on a 5 hour journey to North Wales.

For some of it was going to be an event of a lifetime, other a celebration of how far they have come in less than a year!

Joining last September some have gone from sedentary to mountain conqueror in just 9 short months!

We took 15 including me up and brought 15 back. I can’t say for sure that they are the same 15 people as many when through some changes as they conquered fatigue and fears.

We all arrived at the hotel at the bottom of mount Snowdon on Friday evening after a long 5 hour drive. Obviously there were only 2 things on people’s minds…

1)      A good meal

2)      Hitting the bar!

Some of us hit the bar harder than others but a good time was had by all.

By 2.30 most were in bed getting the necessary shut eye for the climb ahead… others (Amy) where still up trying to sober up a little before bed!

Here she is the following morning not looking ready to go????

I think she may have been still drunk as it was not long before she looked like this!

The alarm went off all too soon at 7 for a 7.30 breakfast, then we splint into 2 groups, a fast and a slower group.

The fast group had an extra job to do.

Drop the cars off on the other side of Snowdon and then get back and catch up the other group who would have about an hour head start.

I led the faster group and we quickly got our kit together and got off to the drop point. My dad (Tony in this photo) led the slower group who then signed out the hotel and started their climb up the mountain.

I don’t know if you like driving, but if you do I can recommend the Snowdon area, but make sure that you have someone who knows where they are going or a good satnav!

I thought we were trouble…. As I heard my co-pilot come out with the quote of the weekend…. She (Susan) was doing the map reading…

“I think we’re in trouble. There does not seem to be a wiggle for the wiggle that we are on!!!!…..

Possibly not what you want to hear when you are throwing your car through the lanes of Snowdonia we 3 other cars following you rely on you to not get lost!

All was good though the map just needed turning round so that all the wiggles matched up.

We quickly got back from the dropping off of the car and started our assent. The pace was brisk and I have to give congratulation to Angie White, Neil Williams, Susan Beddal and Gale Jackson as they kept the pace and stormed the mountain!

We caught the up with the other team at about 12.30.

It was then a hard climb to the top as we were climbing in 25+ degree heat without a cooling wind.

We regrouped before the top….

Amy had to regroup mentally as well as physically, hangover in full swing in 25 degree heat!!!!

The top was gained in 4 hours so we had celebratory nibbles, water and a photo. After we all used the new toilets and congratulating ourselves for getting there regardless of painful bits and medical conditions it was time to start back down.

We started in good sprit’s knowing lunch was going to be an hour or less away and that we were on our way home….  The happy campers soon learned that down is a lot harder than up. For those of you who have never climbed a mountain, the down part is harder for 2 reasons. 1) The strain on the leg muscle and knee joints is far greater and 2) uneven ground covered in lose pebbles becomes treacherous.

Although people knees and leg were getting tired after lunch everyone battled on. Strong breeze was cooling us and our bellies were full again. Amy’s hang over was subsiding and she was starting to look positively perky!

We got to the car park on the other side of Snowdon about 8 hours after the first group had left the hotel.

Time for a finishers photo a good congratulatory slap on the back!

Well done to everyone one who climbed, I really enjoyed myself. We’ll choose a different mountain next year for some more climbing and photo taking.

I have heard mention and interest for doing the 3 peaks challenge I’ll be asking those of you interested soon. But for the time being it’s time to look forward to the summer BBQ in July and then the next activity weekend in September.

Hope to see you all there,

Keith

P.S – You see Absolute Bootcamp Berkhamsted is not just about the exercise and the weight loss, we are also about the experience and friendship that can only be gained through experiencing things together.