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Shop right when your budget is tight

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The weekly grocery bill can take a considerable chunk from your hard earned weekly income, and feeding a family today is a huge expense.  With many of the fast food chains currently advertising family sized meals for $20 it can seem like an easy affordable option for those who are time poor and need something that’s quick and convenient.  Packaged, processed food tends to be made using cheaper ingredients with minimal nutritional value in them as they are mass produced.  We all know the health risks associated with a poor diet – diabetes, obesity and heart disease to name a few so it’s important that we learn healthy eating habits from a young age and learn how to ‘shop right’.

As a kid, the weekly trip to the local supermarket with my Mum seemed like a chore and wasn’t always welcomed, but the lessons I learnt on how to shop right were invaluable.  I have fond memories of being sent off to search for a particular item in a specific aisle and see if I could bring it back faster than my brother and his chosen item – fun, family times certainly helped the learning process.  Then assisting to carry the shopping home ensured the whole family stayed active and spent quality time together.

Here are my top tips to help you shop right:-

  • Plan Ahead – make sure you go shopping with a list.  Plan your week ahead; What will you be having for dinner each day? Who else will be eating with you? Do you need extra items?  Create a list, take the list with you and stick to it! 
  • Buy in Bulk – when Supermarkets have special offers on like buy one get one free or 20% off this week only, utilise this opportunity to stock up.  Basic everyday household items such as coffee and toilet rolls can all be bought cheaper when you buy bigger.
  • Buy Home Brands – Items manufactured by a big brand name are more expensive than lesser priced home brands – usually which have evolved recently to be of similar quality. There is no need to spend so much on fancy packaging the cost for the consumer is reduced.Shop Around – Visit your local green grocer to compare prices on fresh fruit and vegetables.  Generally, as these items are grown and purchased locally, transport costs are kept down which makes them cheaper.
  • Compare Prices – If you have a couple of supermarkets next to each other why not visit both and compare prices?  Checkout the special offers they currently have to see if any are suitable for you. Don’t hesitate to bring a major difference in price to the attention of the store either – you will most likely end up the winne
  • Buy Wholesale – Currently there are many wholesalers opening up their doors to the individual consumer who wish to buy wholesale products at wholesale prices.  Do your research online and find out where your local wholesalers are and benefit from their cheaper prices.  Items such as meat can be bought in bulk, split into portions and frozen for future use. This is very convenient for when you don’t have time to get to the shops!
  • Learn to Cook – treat yourself to a recipe book, pick up a recipe card from the supermarket or utilise the recipes available online and get creative in the kitchen.  When making your evening meal, why not cook up a little extra and take it the next day for lunch?  Another option is to take an hour from your Sunday afternoon and spend it cooking up for the week ahead.

How to Beat Your Weight Loss Barriers

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Starting your weight loss journey isn’t easy and let’s face it even with the best intentions but sometimes life just gets in the way and staying on track is not always easy to do.  Weight loss efforts can fail when you are faced with hurdles along the way that derail your progress, commitment and dedication.

Sustaining a healthy lifestyle is the key to success which includes being able to identify these hurdles and learn how to overcome them.  Check out some of my top tips for helping to overcome the most common obstacles I see regularly with clients.

Eating to kill time,

Do you ever get bored or tired so you reach for food? Many times, this urge to eat doesn’t come from the feeling of real hunger, it is actually from boredom. Every time you find yourself snooping through the cupboards or fridge for a snack, ask your self are you really hungry?  There is often a reoccurring pattern with this type of behaviour too so try to identify if for example are you doing this every night at a certain time? Or do you do it when you’re feeling grumpy or stressed?

Tips to overcome this: Drink water to satisfy your cravings, call a friend or go for a walk to keep yourself busy.

 

You Struggle to say no to your friends,

Why is it that when you are trying your hardest to cut out junk food, alcohol and sweets you’re always getting invited out for dinner by friends?!   Because you don’t want to let them down you go along and end up eating something you didn’t want to have and then feel terrible about it. You find yourself saying yes to these scenarios because you want to see your friends and make sure you keep them happy and let’s be honest, sometimes there can be peer pressure to have just one glass or one bite!

Tips to overcome this: Order a healthy option, if no healthy options available settle for a tea or water. Let your family and friends know your health goals, this way they can support your health and fitness journey.

 

You use every meal out as a treat,

If you eat out quite often whether its lunch out of the office or weekly dinner catch ups with friends so sometimes you use opportunities to treat yourself. Treats here and there are fine, but ordering deep fried chips on the side to each meal out of home, will derail your progress. Don’t celebrate your meal out by eating whatever you want.  A good friend of mine once said, “you’re not a dog so why do you need treats?”

Tips to overcome this: Ensure you make the best choices possible on the menu and if need be tell the waiter to remove certain foods like chips and replace with vegetables.

 

You Struggle to say no to office treats,

Why is there often so much temptation around the office?  Be realistic about this, if you know your work place has treats available weekly that you can’t resist, don’t restrict yourself. Our minds are funny things, and sometimes by telling yourself you can’t have something we tend to want it more. Allow yourself one little treats a week, and the rest of the time practice saying ‘no’ firmly.

Tips to overcome this: Having your own healthy snacks at work as back up and ensuring you have enough good fats such as nuts to reduces cravings late in the afternoon

 

You think you have already blown it,

This is one of the most common reasons people self-sabotage!  We have all been there before, eaten something we shouldn’t have and then decided to keep going. If you get the mind set of ‘I can keep eating because i have already blown it for the day, I’ll start again tomorrow’ then you could seriously be destroying your weight loss efforts. This can be a very dangerous habit to get into, making one mistake and following it up with 10 more can get you into a very bad habit. It’s much easier for your body to digest one piece of cake compared to a whole cake.
Tips to overcome this: Accept that you have made 1 poor choice and get back on horse. Allow yourself to have a treat, if you have 5-6 small meals per day that’s 42 meal for the week, if 1 or 2 aren’t perfect this will not affect your long term goal!

Why Women Should Weight Train

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Every female on the planet wants to have a fat free body, they want to feel tight, toned and sexy.  Many women fall into the trap of overtraining on cardio and forget the most important type of training for fat loss and that is strength or weight training.  So why do ladies avoid weights?  Generally the comments you hear are:  “Weights are for men”, “I don’t want to look like a man” or “I don’t want to get big and bulky”.  Well Ladies let me tell you that this simply won’t happen unless you start taking illegal supplements – we simply do not have enough testosterone in our bodies to build muscle like men do.

So why should you train with weights?  The most important reason is that weight training builds and maintains muscle and this is the key element to revving up your metabolism, even when you are at rest, with an increased lean muscle mass your metabolism will burn more energy.  The more muscle you have the greater your capacity to store carbohydrates which means you can eat more carbs without them being converted into fat.

Women who regular train with weights will find that their body becomes tighter and their shape will be transformed into a strong athletic figure without saddle bags or bingo wings – isn’t this what every woman wants?

As you get older the metabolism naturally slows down – your resting metabolic rate will drop approx 2% every decade after the age of 20 due to a loss of muscle mass.  By weight training and building muscle regularly and consistently you will ensure that your muscle density is maintained and thus ensure your metabolic rate continues to stay fired up.

The process of lifting weights puts stress on the muscles and the body responds by building more muscle cells to compensate for the new loads being placed upon them and this cell generation requires energy – hence your tight toned body has the capacity to burn more calories.

The other essential reason why women should do weights is that it can prevent the onset of osteoporosis or brittle bones by ensuring the bones stay strong.  During exercise when the muscles are being stressed the ligaments that attach the muscle to bones pull on the bone which stimulates cell growth and calcium deposits as the body ensures it is capable of taking the stress loaded.

Other benefits of weight training include:-

  • Increased strength and everyday functional capability
  • Reduction in blood pressure
  • Less risk of developing Type II diabetes
  • Stronger immune system
  • Healthier joints
  • Increased balance and performance
  • Calcium Retention
  • ‘Delayed Aging Process

Do Crunches Get You a Six Pack?

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It must be understood that achieving a flat stomach or six-pack does not occur as a result of any form of abdominal exercise in isolation.   It is also important to point out that you cannot spot reduce one particular area of the body; you have to focus on overall body fat loss by following an appropriate eating plan, in combination with weight training and cardiovascular exercise. You don’t burn petrol by opening and closing the bonnet of the car. You burn it by driving it. The same applies with your stomach. Move your body and you will burn the fuel and fat off your stomach. It may surprise you to learn that we all have a six pack, some people also have a layer of fat over the top of theirs!

The only way to get a flat stomach is to firstly lower your overall body fat (through proper nutrition and regular weight training and cardiovascular exercise). The body tends to store fat easiest around the mid section due to the need to protect the vital internal organs.  It is due to this natural survival mechanism that excess fat is stored here first and can be the last area the body draws on for energy.  The body will take energy stored in the fat of the arms and legs before taking it from the mid section as its priority is to protect the precious organs.  This is why for some individuals reducing fat around their mid section can be tough.

Secondly, the stabilising muscles around the spine need to be activated to achieve a neutral lumbar spine, rather than a lordotic spine, which make the stomach protrude.One of the most widely known abdominal exercises is the “crunch”.

The Rectus Abdominus (which is the muscle targeted when performing a crunch) does not play a direct role in core stability as this muscle does not attach to the spine. The Rectus Abdominus is generally stronger than the stabilising muscles and its main role is to flex the spine, the movement performed when doing crunches.

People may respond by saying that they don’t perform crunches to stabilise their spine.  Instead they perform them to get a flat stomach.  I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but this is never going to work.

There is only one way to make an abdominal crunch effectively switch ‘on’ the stabilising muscles and that is to perform them very slowly, with the correct breathing pattern.  You stabilise first and then exhale on the contraction or crunch part of the exercise.

That way, the Rectus Abdominus is forced to co-contract with the Obliques, Transverse Abdominus and Multifidus, as they consist of predominantly Slow Twitch muscle fibres, which like to be recruited slowly.

Crunches performed at faster speeds may be useful to the body builder who wishes to thicken the Rectus Abdominus to achieve the “Six Pack” look.  However, this will only be effective once the Body Fat has been lost.

If clients, who are not conscious about losing Body Fat, perform crunches they may appear to be getting fatter, as the abdominal wall thickens, without a corresponding loss of adipose tissue.

Now that we’ve established people should generally focus on exercises that will stabilise the core, there are so many effective exercises to choose from:

  • Supine Floor Holds
  • Supine floor Crunches
  • Prone Ball Holds
  • Supine Ball Holds
  • Supine Ball Crunches
  • Supine Leg Lowers

These are all useful exercises and each of them have various progressions to them.

Breaking the Binge Cycle

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One of the biggest ‘danger times’ I see with those I work with is the dreaded night time eating session, you know the one when you’ve finally got the kids to bed and get a chance to put your feet up and relax on the sofa.  Many find themselves wandering into the kitchen looking for something to eat, even though they are not hungry, looking for the sweet treat or that one deserved drink to relax with.  This nightly habit for many can prevent them from losing the weight they want to as it can lead to over indulging in calories.

Enjoying sweet foods after the evening meal can be a habit that forms in childhood or one that evolves over time. Growing up we always had dessert and its only now as an adult that I choose not to, yet when my dad comes to dinner he always likes to have something!  A small serve of pudding, biscuit with a cup of tea or some fruit or yoghurt can be a harmless, and enjoyed without any associated weight problems. It’s more the regular evening binges that completely derail ones calorie intake. The nightly overeating that acts to soothe another emotion – loneliness, frustration, boredom and overeating that can become a deeply entrenched habit, and as such can be very difficult to break.

Night eating can be defined as an issue when it prevents you from reaching a particular goal, whether this be weight loss or just weight control; when it is mentally distracting you from what you really should be doing or when it results in your feeling terrible on a regular basis. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a biscuit or two, but when you demolish an entire packet for the sake of it, or when you cannot have any sweet food in the house for fear of binging then this is an issue.

If you want to remove this habit from your nightly routine then a good starting point is to identify when it happens. Is it when you are home alone, watching TV, when you are online or when you stay up extra late?  Identifying your riskiest time for night eating is the first step in taking control of it.

Next, it is about self-management. Stop buying the foods – if they are not in your house you are less likely to eat them!  Get busy so that you are not at home alone. Or watch less TV so it does not act as a trigger to eat.

Finally, long term the ideal outcome is for you to have some clear rules that you find easy to stick to. This may mean you do have one small, portion and calorie controlled treat each night and that is it. Or that you do not eat after dinner, no exceptions. Every one of us will need a different rule that suits the goals we want to achieve.  Remember, the first night you try and break a habit, it is difficult. The second, not so easy either but once you get 3-4 days under your belt, you will be well on your way to owning and managing your night eating.

Fight the Winter Woolies

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During the winter months it can be very easy to slip into the “World of Comfort” and “Land of Excuseville”.  You may find yourself battling with the blankets in the morning or succumbing to the lure of the TV and sofa in the evening to avoid being out in the cold.  Why is it at this time of year that we allow ourselves to have more treats and indulge?  It is easy to comfort eat and go for the calorie laden food to “feel cosier” and “warm up”.

At the same time as letting our nutrition slide it is easy let ourselves slip into our big baggy comfy warm clothes and before we know it, we are carrying a few extra hidden kilos.  But, the hard work and effort to get you where you are today need not go to waste over winter.  All that’s required to stay on track and avoid being one of the many who rush to get their beach body ready is a little dedication and commitment so that as we come out of hibernation and head into the warmer seasons you can be confident that you will look and feel great.

Here are my top tips to help you to stay on track:-

  • Start planning your Summer Holiday, where do you want to go and when will it be? Why not book it now and put a picture on your desk or in your car so you can see it everyday what it is that you’re working towards.
  • Go shopping and buy those shorts or that bikini that you want to wear all summer and leave them hanging somewhere in your bedroom so you can see them every day.
  • Put your training clothes by the side of your bed so you roll straight out of bed and into your workout gear.
  • Throw out the baggy comfy tracksuit that can easily be slipped into and unconsciously filled out. If you can buy yourself a new item of clothing now, then do so and use this to measure any potential weight gain over the winter.  If it starts to feel tight, you know something isn’t right!
  • Make sure you regularly weigh yourself and check in with your measurements and if you find these have gone up then get back on track sooner rather than later so it is easier to manage and there are no scary, unwanted surprises.
  • Commit to someone, help them stay on track with their goal and be their training partner. Why not commit to doing an event together to assist this?
  • Come join my online Facebook community, The Naked Warrior for inspiration, motivation and support with all of your goals