Having access to vast amounts of knowledge has many advantages. But it has a big downside as well. The amount of health and fitness information shows that more is not always better.

Unfortunately the internet has more than its fair share of Keyboard Warriors. These so-called “experts” often give advice with very little experience or qualifications.

This type of information has been called “Broscience.”  It’s often based on opinions and mis-understanding instead of scientific research and real-world experience.

But Broscience isn’t the only problem. Scientific research has often given confusing results.

For years we were told that consuming fat in the diet was a recipe for weight-gain and heart disease. Then the Atkins Diet seemed to suggest the exact opposite. It said that fat loss was the result of fewer carbohydrates and more protein and dietary fat!

Training can be just as confusing: aerobic exercise used to be the main weight-loss and conditioning tool. This now seems to be replaced by weight-training and High Intensity Intervals.

In many cases the amount of information has led to what’s known as Paralysis by Analysis. I have seen this on many occasions with my clients and have suffered from it myself.

With so many options, it can be difficult to know which one is “the best”. The end result is that you feel more confused than ever, and decide to do nothing. Most people will take no action rather than make the wrong choice.

To avoid this situation I use the following quote from Kahlil Gibran:

“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more that much knowledge that is idle”

So let’s look at some basic action items that can help us with health and fitness.

Decide What You Really Want: Sometimes we confuse ourselves by wanting to have everything at once: reduced body fat, increased strength, improved sports performance, speed and endurance.

You can improve these aspects of fitness at the same time because there is some carry-over between them. However, it works best if you focus on one item at a time. When working with clients who don’t know where to start, I usually suggest reducing body fat first.

Identify Your Main Obstacle: This is probably the easiest part. After hundreds of nutrition consultations, I believe that most people have enough information to get started. And they also know what’s stopping them from doing it.

In some cases it can be work or family commitments. Sometimes it’s down to confusion or information overload. By removing, or working around the obstacle, you can free up time and energy to start taking action.

Get The Necessary Support.  Everything is easier when you get a bit of help. It may be as simple as asking your spouse to hide the biscuits and other “goodies” in the house. Or inviting a friend or family member to go training with you.

If you decide to hire a trainer, make sure that the person has the qualifications and experience to get the results that you’re looking for.

There’s a saying that Success Leaves Clues. Therefore your gym or trainer should have a proven track record of achieving success with clients like you.

Take Action! Even taking small steps towards your goal can be a great motivator. Start small and as you begin to see signs of progress, your confidence will grow and allow you to be a little more ambitious.

You won’t see results from a new fitness programme overnight. A large amount of consistency with healthy habits is required. So just be patient and keep taking action to guarantee success.

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Today we’ll look at some ways that will make your fitness programme less scary.

Take Responsibility.

One of the most important aspects of starting a new regime is taking responsibility for the results. This can be a little scary for some people but I believe that it can actually be very encouraging.

In most cases a person’s state of health is the direct result of their lifestyle. There are of course obvious cases where people are unfortunate enough to have diseases or disabilities that are nobody’s fault.

However, in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, E. Feiring writes that “unhealthy lifestyle contributes significantly to the burden of disease.”

The paper also quotes the World Health Organisation as saying that the obesity epidemic leads to increased risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and several cancers.

More importantly, the WHO also states that obesity cannot be blamed on either environment or genetics alone. And although family medical history and socioeconomic status are important, “increase in caloric intake and decrease in physical activity are primarily responsible for it.”

In other words if you want to increase your chances of being healthy, eat less and move more! And I think it’s very re-assuring that we have total control over how much we eat and move.

Ready, Fire, Aim.

In many cases, people wait for the ideal situation and the perfect plan until they take action. I have been guilty of this way of thinking in the past. And, although I firmly believe in having a well thought-out plan with specific, measurable goals, there is no substitute for taking action.

The “perfect plan” should be a motivation to get moving, not a reason to avoid it. “Ready, Fire, Aim” is a business strategy that can be adapted to your health and fitness goals.

Rather than the traditional “ready, aim, fire” approach of planning everything to the tiniest detail and waiting until circumstances are perfect, you simply take the action that brings you in the general direction, and then fine-tune it based on how you’re doing.

The very act of starting a new project or programme is the most important part. Each small success you achieve will create the momentum and motivation to keep going, and you can alter your target so that your perfect plan becomes a reality.

Develop Good Habits.

A wise man once told me that life is a series of habits.  And the secret of success in any aspect of life was to avoid the bad habits and practice the good ones. Most of us, when we’re honest with ourselves, know exactly what actions make us feel happier and healthier, and also what actions makes us feel wrecked.

Being more energetic and having a better level of health does not require us to turn into full-time athletes living on a diet of cabbage soup and multivitamins.

Doing some form of physical activity that you enjoy for approximately 20-30 minutes per day will raise your energy levels and your mood. Replacing junk, processed “food” with vegetables, proteins, and plenty of clean water will also help you to look and feel much better.

The two habits that are really important to developing good health and a smaller waistline are probably the two most under-rated: sleep and stress management. Increased stress levels combined with reduced quality and quantity of sleep can result in many types of negative physical and mental health outcomes.

Research has shown, and I can vouch for it from personal experience, that setting aside a little time every day to meditate, pray, or even just be quiet can have huge positive effects on your overall health and sense of well-being. The same is true of getting seven to nine hours of unbroken sleep every night. It sounds crazy, but the more you sleep at night, the leaner you’ll be!

If you’re unhappy with your current shape or state of health, then simply take the responsibility to change it for the better, take some action to get the ball rolling. And then practice the good habits that will have you feeling and looking your best.

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It’s been argued on several occasions that labour-saving devices are partly responsible for the decrease in levels of overall physical activity. Increased use of cars, dishwashers, remote controls, game consoles and even robotic vacuum cleaners have therefore been held partly responsible for the increase in obesity levels.

However I believe that some of the blame lies in the unlimited information that we now have.

Just think about it for a moment. Imagine that you are carrying a few pounds (or maybe a lot) of extra body fat. Alternatively, your body weight might not be a problem but you’d like to get stronger or fitter.

So you decide to do a little bit of investigation in Health and Fitness magazines, in newspaper articles (some of them are excellent!), or else you go on-line and Google away to your heart’s content.

You’re pretty sure that you need to start with some form of exercising, so which one is the best? Some “experts” will tell you that you need to be in your “fat-Burning” zone and that slow and steady aerobic work is the way to go. Others will promise you results with their 5, 6 or 7 minute Abs programme. One minute you’ll hear that High Intensity Interval Training is the most efficient way to lose body fat, and then someone else will say that it’s not recommended unless you’re a highly experienced athlete.

And what about weight-training? Well, that will either increase your metabolism, and leave you in the best shape of your life, or else you’ll be muscle- bound and crippled from chronic joint injuries. It all depends on where you get your information.

And then we get to the good part: Nutrition. You heard somewhere that you’re going to have to tidy up the type of food you eat if you want to get the best results. So what diet are you going to go for?

Will it be vegetarian or a juice-based de-tox? Are you going to go low-calorie or low carbohydrate? How about Atkins, the South Beach, or the Paleo Diets? You might even want to combine them all with a bit of intermittent fasting!

Even this very brief overview shows that we are bombarded with choice when it comes to deciding which training and nutrition regime will work best for us.

It’s no wonder that many people are overwhelmed by all the information and suffer what’s called paralysis by analysis. They have so much choice that they can’t decide and they end up doing nothing.

In his book “The Paradox of Choice – Why More is Less”, psychologist Barry Schwarz has stated that an excess of choice can also lead to feelings of unhappiness. His theory is that when we have too many options, we think in terms of missed opportunities and we tend to imagine that all the others are better than the one we eventually choose. It appears to be a classic case of “The grass is always greener on the other side!”

So, what to do?

1. Make a Decision on your Main Goal
Do you want to be fitter, stronger, or leaner? A good Training and Nutrition programme will give you improvements in each of these areas but it’s far simpler to focus on just one area at a time.

2. Do Something!
Once you’ve decided what you want, start taking some action immediately. The reason there are so many different training plans and diets is because they’ve all worked, to some degree, for somebody. Remember that when fat loss is a goal, moving more and eating less is a good place to start.

3. Monitor Your Progress
It seems like a logical thing to do, but many people don’t monitor their progress in a realistic manner. Rather than judging your progress, based on how you feel or how you THINK you’re doing, have some measureable standards that will give you honest feedback. Regular tape or body fat measurements, as well as training diaries will help keep you honest.

4. Adjust as Required
If you’re on a fat-loss programme, you should be losing fat and if you’re on a fitness programme, you should be getting fitter. If you’re measurements tell you otherwise, then it’s time to get a better programme.

The level of information that we have access to can be life-enhancing, but if you’re suffering from Analysis Paralysis, then just keep it simple, get moving and monitor your progress.

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When it comes to weddings, there’s no doubt that there’s a huge amount of pressure on the Bride. We might refer to the event as the “Couple’s Big Day”, but in reality it’s all about the Bride. The groom is merely the Best Supporting Actor.

And it’s probably fair to say that the majority of the pre-wedding planning and organisation ends up being done by the Bride. It may be a generalisation – but probably not too far off the mark – to say that most Grooms tend to have the attitude that everything will be grand on the day, so what’s all the panic?

But, unfortunately, things like this don’t just happen by themselves and in order to get the desired result, the groundwork has to be done.

And if we’re interested in achieving health and fitness goals, we can learn a lot from the focus and determination of our blushing brides.

At many times during the year we work with Brides-to-be, either in our Circuit Class Bootcamps, or as Personal Training Clients. And without exception, they are a joy to work with, because they actually follow all the training, nutrition and lifestyle advice we give them!

The difference between Brides-to-be, and those people who achieve less spectacular body composition results is down to the level of motivation. Here are some of the strategies and mechanisms that Brides – consciously or sub-consciously – use in order to make sure they look their absolute best on their Special Day.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Our bride will have a specifically measured dress that she is absolutely determined to fit in to. There’s no vague “I’d like to lose a bit of weight” “tone-up”, or “feel a little bit fitter” in this lady’s vocabulary. Add into the mix some regular dress fittings that will help her track her progress, and the all-important deadline of the wedding day itself, and she has all the ingredients to keep her motivation sky-high. This in turn ensures that the “action-based” part of the acronym – the healthy nutrition and regular training- are much easier to stick with.

Social Support
In most cases the Bride will have the backing of a circle of family and friends who all want her to look absolutely fabulous on the wedding day. This group will usually include a number of bridesmaids who will be “encouraged” by the Bride to also look their best! This type of social support, where people share a common goal, has been shown on numerous occasions to be a very effective component of achieving desired results. Even for the most motivated of people, there will be days when stress levels rise and the fitness or nutrition regime doesn’t seem to be going according to plan. On days like this it can be very tempting to give up or think that it’s just not worth the effort.

It’s at these times that it’s very important to have somebody who will listen to you and encourage you to stick with the plan, and help you to remember the “Big Picture”

Go Public
Weddings obviously involve a very big public commitment of the “In Sickness and In Health” variety. However there’s also the fact that the Bride is putting herself in full public view to be seen on the day, and for years afterwards, in video, photographs and even on Social Media. This type of scrutiny has the potential to be over-whelming and it should go without saying that it’s not a good thing to be obsessive about body shape, especially if it is achieved by methods that can compromise health.

However from a more positive point of view, it can be a very effective motivator to help keep someone on a well-balanced exercise and nutrition programme, knowing that not only will they look and feel their best, but that all their loved ones will have the photographic evidence of their achievement for years to come!

So, if you want to keep yourself on track to achieve your ideal body shape, take a few lessons from our brides: pick an occasion that will put you under a certain amount of public scrutiny, enlist the help of others to support you, and give yourself the all-important deadline to hit your target.

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Ok, this week I’m not advocating violence under any circumstances. What I’d like you to do instead, is to consider what you are honestly prepared to do in order to achieve the goals that you say you want to achieve.

A good working definition of insanity (which may – or may not – have been said by Albert Einstein) states that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Based on that, we’ve all probably been a little insane in some area of our lives at one stage or another. In my experience, one of the bigger sources of this form of insanity is the area of health and fitness.

I’ve lost track of the amount of clients (sorry ladies, but it’s mostly female clients), whose only method of weight loss is walking. Although many of them have not seen any significant improvement in weight, clothes size or body fat levels, they continue to walk the same route at the same time and at the same speed, in the vain hope that a huge amount of fat-loss will magically happen.

And it’s not just confined to females or walkers. There are many people, male and female, who are doing gym and class-based training programmes, but who have been sorely disappointed with the results.

If this applies to you, or somebody you know, stay with me while we look at some practical ways to fix the situation.

Make a Realistic Assessment: Your goal, or destination, is obviously important, but so too is your starting point. In order to be able to put together a realistic plan to reach your goal, it’s vital that you assess where you currently stand in relation to that target. By assessing, your current strength, fitness level, body shape or whatever measurement you want to improve, you’ll have a much better idea of what you’ll need to do to change it. This will help to keep your expectations realistic, because it should be obvious that a training programme to drop 15% body fat will require greater effort and last longer than one that’s aiming to drop 2% fat.

Be Accountable: As a general rule, when we’re left to our own devices, there’s a huge temptation to stay comfortable and take the easy option. A missed training session, a sugar-filled “treat,” or another night on the town can usually be justified in one way or another if we’re answerable to nobody but ourselves. Or maybe that’s just me.

I see it all the time with my own clients: the people who make themselves accountable by consistently handing in food diaries, and getting measured on a weekly basis, achieve far better results than those who choose to train without any reference to their progress or lack of same.

Research and practical experience has shown that when an individual is accountable to somebody else, whether it’s a trainer, training partner or support group, they tend to achieve far better results. Therefore it makes sense to find somebody who will make sure that you stick with your plan, and who won’t allow you to cheat yourself out of achieving your goal.

Be Prepared To Change the Plan: The purpose of accountability is to make sure that you stick to the plan, and the purpose of re-assessing on a regular basis is to make sure that the plan is working. If you are making progress towards your goal, well done, keep going. However, if what you’re doing is not getting the desired results, the plan will need to change.

This is where our quotes above come into play: if you’re not making progress and you don’t change it, then, by “Einstein’s definition” you are insane! So, what exactly are you prepared to do? If fat loss is the goal, can you reduce some calories, can you make better food choices, can you increase the frequency or the intensity of your training sessions?

And if you can, are you willing to do it in order to reach your goal? This willingness to do whatever it takes to reach the target is what separates successful individuals from also-rans in all areas of life. Never stop fighting until the fighting’s done!

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Once upon a time, a tourist was driving around the countryside. He soon realised that he was completely lost when he saw grass growing in the middle of the road.

He stopped at a cottage to ask for directions and in the course of the conversation he noticed a huge hole in the roof of the cottage. He asked the owner why he hadn’t fixed the roof, to which the man replied: “when it’s raining, it’s too wet to fix it, and when it’s dry it doesn’t need to be fixed.” True story.

We’ve all fallen victim to this type of thinking at various stages, and in various aspects of our lives. It’s a kind of comfort zone where it appears that it’ll be too traumatic and scary to make positive changes, so we prefer to stay with a situation that is, at best, mediocre and, at worst, may be a cause of bad health or deep unhappiness.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the more common excuses we use to avoid making progress in our health and fitness, and throw in some suggestions about how we can overcome them.

I’ll wait till I’m a bit fitter before I join the gym

This is probably my favourite. In my opinion it’s the equivalent of saying “I’ll wait till I get a bit better before I go to the doctor.” I totally understand that many people may feel intimidated about joining a gym, exercise class, or sports club. They imagine that they’ll be the most out-of-shape person there, and that everybody will be watching and judging them.

The fact is that most gyms and clubs will have programmes that specifically cater for beginners, or else they’ll be happy to accommodate them in their regular classes. As far as judgement is concerned, most trainees are so focussed on their own workout and performance that they don’t notice what anybody else is doing. And in my experience, I’ve always been impressed by how helpful and encouraging the vast majority of regular trainees are towards beginners.

Most advanced trainees remember how they felt when they were the “newbies”, and will usually go out of their way to be helpful. So if this is your excuse, pick an activity that you think you’ll enjoy and go for it!

I Don’t Have Time

This is a lot more common these days, and it may be the case that juggling work, study and providing for a family leaves people with very little free time. The fact of the matter is that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I believe that successful people just manage their time a bit more efficiently, and I also believe that it is an area that everybody can improve upon.

Many people think that a training or exercise session has to last at least an hour in order to be effective. However 5 or 10 minutes every day will get better results than doing a 60 minute burst every couple of weeks.

High Intensity Interval Training routines are typically quite demanding, very effective for fat loss and improved fitness, but don’t need to last longer than 20 minutes. And if you can’t spare that time, just do half the session.

And remember that if you add up all the time that you spend on Social Networks, surfing the ‘net and watching reality TV, you may even find that you could manage to do a full work-out every day!

I’m Too Tired

This is closely linked to the Time issue. Many people are exhausted from a feeling of being stressed-out and overwhelmed. However there is also the more obvious fact that most people are not getting the necessary quality of quantity of sleep.

Like exercise and diet, sleep requirements are very individual, but research recommends that most people will function at their best with somewhere between and 7 and 9 hours of un-broken sleep per night. And it’ll work best if you are actually asleep before 11pm.

This is another area where TV, internet and Social Media are a factor because many people choose to use them “to un-wind”, when in fact they would get more rest and recovery by going to bed earlier.

Another aspect of regular exercise that’s often forgotten is that it actually increases energy levels and decreases stress.

If you’ve found yourself using any of the above excuses, simply cut out the daily activities that don’t add to your health, get to bed earlier, and get training!

The post What’s your Excuse? appeared first on Body and Mind Fitness - Personal Training Ennis.

Gyms tend to be packed for the 1st couple of weeks in January before a steady decline in numbers means that the “Regulars” can have their favourite machines and benches all to themselves again.

It’s also around this time that “diets” are abandoned and the old familiar comfort food is welcomed back to the cupboards.

So why are these predictable scenes played out every year? I have my own theories on it and I want to suggest a few ways that can help you get back on track (if you really want to!)

When my wife and I started our business in 2008, we thought long and hard about a name that would actually mean something to us, and would also let potential clients know what we were about.

I had worked with hundreds of clients in other gyms for the previous 6 years, and had noticed that many of them got great results while others didn’t get anything like the level of success that would have been expected.

Although physiological reasons like under-active thyroid or digestive system issues will definitely have a negative effect on fat/weight loss, these items were not an issue for the vast majority of the people who did not reach their goals.

In most cases, their mental/psychological preparation and conditioning did not match their physical effort and so, they were effectively doomed to failure. Body & Mind Fitness seemed like a good name for our business, because we wanted to convey the idea that in order to reach your physical potential or ideal, a certain amount of mental effort was also required.

Mental strength tends to be a little misunderstood and not many people realize that it can be trained and developed in much the same way as physical/muscular strength. The following tips can be applied to your health and fitness plan but will work equally well for all areas of your life.

1. Focus On The Process Not The Goal
It’s a well-worn cliché that life is a journey and not a destination but it bears repeating in this case. Although it is very important to have, and to be aware of, a well-defined and specific goal, it is also very important to have a series of action steps that will help you to reach it. Constant focus on this ultimate result can lead to impatience and frustration, especially when progress seems to be slow. It’s far more useful to focus attention on mastering the habits that will lead to the goal.

In the case of fitness or fat loss, these habits would include regular training, better quality food as well as better sleep and stress management. By improving your performance in each of these areas, you’ll find that the goal takes care of itself.

2. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
In order to improve your body shape you will have to sweat, experience muscle soreness and cut back on junk food and drink. But this is just part of the process that will leave you healthier, stronger, fitter, more energetic and looking great. Think of it as if you were re-decorating your house. While the decoration is going on, the place is a mess, you can’t find anything, and you’re tired and frustrated. But once the job is finished, you forget the temporary discomfort because the result was worth the effort!

3. Think Feedback Not Failure
When you have your well-defined goal and have put together your action steps, it is a good idea to measure your results on a weekly basis. Remember that each of these steps should be taking you closer to your goal. On a fat-loss plan you will usually see weekly drops in body fat % of somewhere between .5 and 1%, your clothes will start to feel a little bit looser, and your scale weight will also drop to some extent.

If none of these are happening, it is not a sign that you have failed. It simply means that your current plan isn’t working, and you’ll have to change it in some way. Eat Less and Move More is usually a good place to start!

Put these 3 tips into action and you’ll have a much better chance of reaching whatever target you set for yourself at the start of the year.

The post How’s It Going? appeared first on Body and Mind Fitness - Personal Training Ennis.

Over the years, I’ve noted something similar with clients when it comes to how they’re doing with their nutrition plans! Typically, when I ask clients at the gym about the quality and quantity of the food, they usually nod their head vigorously while telling me that they’re “being very good” or that their food is “going grand.”

These lines are usually said with a lot more passion and indignation immediately after they’ve had an assessment that shows their weight, body-fat % and tape measurements have gone up!

I’m not suggesting for one moment that clients are being deliberately deceptive. (Ok, some of them are). The simple fact is that it is very hard to remember every single thing that you’ve had to eat or drink over the course of a week, unless you write it down as close as possible to the time you’ve consumed it.

Another issue is that some people mistakenly believe that they’re eating “healthy” food and that they can eat as much of it as they like. Therefore, confusion about appropriate choices and portion size can also lead to poor results.

It is for the above reasons that I insist that all our Personal Training and Semi-Private Training clients keep a food and lifestyle diary. In this way, we can assess what the clients are eating and recommend any necessary changes to help them reach their goals. We also have an option for our class members to use this service but unfortunately this offer isn’t always accepted!

Recording everything that you eat and drink can be time-consuming and a bit of a pain. If your food and drink choices consist mostly of alcohol and sugar, it can also be a little embarrassing to let another person see the diary.

Despite all of this, food diaries help clients get great results. At the end of every Bootcamp course, our final measurements confirm what scientific research has been saying for years: people who accurately record their food and drink intake on a daily basis lose more body fat than people who don’t.

And it’s not just a case that the people who keep food diaries may also be exercising more often than everybody else. There’s a very well-worn cliché that says that you can’t out-train a bad diet. Technically, you can. But for some people, they’d need to train 6-7 hours a day to undo the effects of their diet.

This was recently confirmed to me when I saw that a client who was doing no exercise (due to injury/illness) but who kept a food diary and had weekly nutrition consultations and measurements, lost more body fat and scale weight than most of the clients who trained 2-4 times per week but who did not record their calorie intake!

In order to get the best results possible, we also record our clients’ sleep patterns and stress levels. Remember that losing body fat works best when it is part of an overall change of lifestyle that includes regular exercise and good nutrition, combined with adequate sleep, recovery and reduced stress levels.

However, simply recording the type and amount of food and drink that you consume is a very simple and effective way to start. In most cases, people who over-eat do so in situations where they’re stressed, bored or distracted and are eating mindlessly in front of the tv, computer or while on the phone.

By making the simple effort of writing down everything that’s been eaten, we can create awareness and in many cases this can be enough to reduce the consumption of junk food.

So, if you want to make positive and long-lasting changes in your eating habits, start putting it in writing!

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In my case this resulted in lower energy, less motivation and a lack of interest in life that bordered on symptoms of depression.

Apart from the fact that this didn’t feel great for me personally, it also had a negative effect on my family and business.

It was for these reasons that I decided that I needed to sort myself out and that I’d need some help with it. I enlisted the help of Eoin Lacey, the co-owner of Irish Strength Institute, and we agreed to put a programme in place to get me back to my physical and mental peak.

Over the years I’d prided myself on “talking the talk and walking the walk”. I maintained a regular training programme, played competitive sport and ate a healthy diet consisting of lots of vegetables, meat and fruit with the occasional sweet and alcohol treats. Most importantly I slept well and felt energetic.

However, more recently, these habits were starting to slide as the demands of work and family made it more challenging to maintain the so-called work-life balance.

Something had to give, and this time, it was me. The following action items are similar to what I’d been recommending to clients for years. However knowing what to do and doing it are 2 very different things, but by having a Coach to report to, I was ensuring that I’d a much better chance of reaching my goals.

Diet
During the time that my energy levels were deteriorating, I’d found myself craving junk food to a greater degree. As often happens in these cases, I’d convinced myself that I “needed” the sugar fix to keep me going. Actually the exact opposite is true (and I knew it!). Excess sugar in the form of sweets, chocolate and most processed products cause massive blood sugar imbalances leading to cravings and energy and mood swings. This in turn leads to further cravings, “sugar hangovers” and a general feeling of mental and physical fatigue.

A slightly extreme measure was called for and I decided to go “Cold Turkey”. I went on a 14-day protein and fat adaptation diet. This meant that I was going to eat only green vegetables and salad, with some unprocessed, lean meat and fish (preferably organic) at EVERY meal for 2 weeks.

The purpose of this is to improve Metabolic Flexibility. People who are metabolically flexible can use either carbohydrates or body fat as energy, and therefore, they can maintain more consistent energy levels while also having improved exercise capacity and generally lower body fat levels.

Metabolic inflexibility means there’s an over-reliance on carbohydrates as the main fuel source, and this in turn makes it harder to lose body fat.

The first 3 or 4 days on this programme was hard going. Initially I felt hungry all the time and then, on day 4 I was very sluggish. But as the fat adaptation began to take place and I started eating a LOT more meat and veg, I started to feel really good. And more importantly those dreaded sugar cravings were becoming a thing of the past.

Exercise
In my case I actually had to reduce the intensity of training. The problem was that I was training very hard but I wasn’t recovering from it. Pure ego and stubbornness meant that I kept going until I crashed. Therefore I saw no improvement from my efforts, which reduced the enjoyment and increased my stress levels.

By reducing the intensity of my sessions and only training when I felt fully recovered, I began to enjoy it more, ended up working out more regularly and this in turn lead to reduced stress levels.

Stress
Most of my stress came from feelings of not having enough time. But this was due to a lack of planning. By putting more structure on my work, meals, training and study, I found I was able to free up a lot more time to enjoy with my family and friends. I also began a very basic meditation routine which allowed me to switch off my brain for 10-15 minutes at a time. And I started walking the dog again! Less stress and more regular, enjoyable exercise also had me sleeping much better.

If you decide to start a New Year Health plan, I would suggest that you try the steps outlined above. In my opinion, having the physical and mental energy to enjoy life should be top of your New Year Resolutions.

The post The Energy Solution appeared first on Body and Mind Fitness - Personal Training Ennis.

That motivator is the other side of the coin to the more positive “pleasure-driven” push they get from imagining how good they’ll look and feel in new, smaller clothes at an upcoming occasion like a wedding, christening or party.

These 2 motivators will always be powerful because they’re just slight variations on the truism that “Everybody wants to look good naked!”

Athletic achievement can also be a great motivator. Improved diet and nutrition are a must for someone who wishes to take part in their first 10k run, long-distance charity cycle or who simply wants to improve the performance and enjoyment of their current sport.

However, in my opinion, there’s a much bigger reason that I believe that everyone should eat as healthily as possible and combine it with regular exercise: improved energy levels.

At this point almost everybody must be aware that lack of exercise combined with a poor quality diet and excess calories increases the risk factor of developing all major diseases.

However, not everybody who eats too much junk food develops type 2 diabetes or heart disease in much the same way that not everybody who smokes develops lung cancer. It just means that these people are at greater risk of developing them.

But just because you’re lucky enough not to have any major disease does not mean that you’re healthy. In fact the World Health Organization’s definition of Health will do the job until we come up with something better: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

I am what is generally considered “healthy” because, thankfully, I don’t have any major illnesses or injuries. However, for a few months towards the end of last year I found that my energy was way below the level that I wanted and needed it to be.

The result of this reduced capacity was that I found it more difficult to get out of bed in the morning, had less energy and enthusiasm for work and my own training was starting to fall behind. Such was my lack of interest in training that there were days when I would have rather eaten a barbell than lifted it!

The symptoms I was experiencing were very similar to what I’ve seen on a regular basis with clients over the years. When people are drained of energy they find it very difficult to make healthy food choices or to do any sort of meaningful exercise. This lack of energy seems to suck the joy out of life to the point that almost everything seems more effort than it’s worth.

This situation is common and although it’s not considered to be a major disease, it’s certainly a long way from being healthy.

So how does it get to this stage?

Recently I attended a Functional Nutrition Seminar run by the Irish Strength Institute. One of the many interesting ideas I took from the course was to consider Health as a bank account. Like most bank accounts you can either make lodgements or withdrawals.

In this particular type of account, health is only improved when lodgements are made in the form of Macronutrients (Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat), Micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), Water, Sleep and Air.

The above are the basic requirements for good health and abundant energy, and they need to be of the best quality available.

The problems arise because Life tends to force us to continually make withdrawals from our Health Account. Increased stress levels, poor food choices, reduced amounts of quality sleep, and insufficient quantities of clean water and air will inevitably lead to reduced vitality and lower energy levels.

The good news is that the amount and quality of lodgements and withdrawals is totally within our own control. By recognizing this fact and then more importantly, doing something about it, we can bring our health and energy levels to the point that allows us to have a more fulfilling and enjoyable life.

I decided I needed to sort myself out. Next week I’ll tell you what worked for me and how it can work for you!

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