If you know me (Matt Whitmore) or have followed Fitter Food for some time, you'll know I love training my glutes and helping others do the same – and for good reason. The glutes are essential for a strong foundation, injury prevention and for looking smoking hot in and out of clothes. Here are my current 5 fave exercises to target the glutes ensuring they are strong and firm.
Festival season is in full swing and we LOVE them because they're an epic combo of all our favourite things; live music, dancing, comedy, food, hanging outdoors, camping and having a good laugh with pals. We always take a Fitter pack-up along for the journey and so that we don't waste too much time in any queues when we arrive. Check out our top choices to fuel your festival antics or other summer time fun.
At the last few Fitter Food events I’ve discussed the role of relationships in health. Not something you might consider when you decide on a health or fat loss goal, but actually, it's hugely relevant.
We’ve been inundated with emails and questions about how to support memory function and inject some life back into our flagging brains. Interestingly, it’s actually our lifestyles that are destroying our ability to remember where we left our keys, if we switched off the oven and what our pin number is. There are so many things you do across your day to support cognitive function, many of which will also lower your risk of most chronic diseases, help you lose weight and perform better.
If you've been on a mission to lose weight and things are stalling, or worse still going in the wrong direction and you're actually gaining body fat, here are a few suggestions and ideas that might help you get back on track with your fat loss goals.
This weekend make it your mission to smash this awesome fat loss workout! This circuit is designed to target every muscle in the body, giving you an awesome calorie burn, taking your cardio fitness up a gear and keeping your metabolism boosted for up to 24 hours afterwards. Best of all it'll take you less than 20 minutes. I like to use outdoor bodyweight training as the perfect complement to my heavy lifting gym sessions. Give it a try!
Most people interested in health and fitness right now have their own journey with macronutrients. Paleo and the Atkins revolution opened up our eyes to the notion that perhaps fat wasn't the enemy after all but rather carbs including bread, rice, pasta and potatoes were causing our waistlines to expand and spill over our jeans in true muffin top style. Of course this is a hugely simplified version of events and it's clear that the goal with any macros is simply finding your sweet spot. However, gaining back your confidence eating carbs again after a low carb diet can be tricky business and is often fraught with fears of weight gain.
One of the most common trends that seem to be driving a number of health issues and fat loss fails today is the fact that many people are creating a debt crisis with regard to their body. In life we need a healthy bank balance in order to pay for our living costs and do the things we enjoy like going on holiday or eating in a nice restaurant. Similarly, our body has a limited reserve of funds available for essential physiological processes and tasks – we’re referring to vitamins, minerals, hormones and all the vital nutrients that keep us alive and kicking. It has some spare resources stored away just in case we need to occasionally go above and beyond.
“Are you beach body ready?” the ad asks, with a picture of a woman in a yellow bikini next to those words. You may remember this ad getting a lot of bad press about a year or so ago when a supplement company rolled out their summer campaign. I won’t be going into that but I do want to focus on the being “beach ready” part.
Nutrition and health information is constantly evolving; once vilified saturated fats like coconut oil and butter are now considered superfoods, cardio was the solution to fat loss then HIIT made an appearance and we're now just waiting for the tables to turn on peanut M&M's. Despite the fads and fashions that come and go there are some fundamental aspects of health that have continually stood the test of time and advanced in scientific research. Despite many of them being obvious components of health I wish someone had emphasised their importance to me a few years ago, healthy living would have been much easier and enjoyable for a start.
I’m a member of a group on Facebook called Did You Run Today? (DYRT) As the name suggests it’s full of enthusiastic runners who share their running stories, log their routes and ‘got soaked in the rain’ photos. It’s nice to see the support given to beginners just starting out confused about footwear or tracking devices as the old timers dive in with lots of helpful tips and advice. There’s families running together and even the dogs are getting involved. The group has a fantastic energy and super friendly atmosphere that serves to motivate and support it’s members on their running journey, but what if you didn’t run today?
Did you know you could get so much more from your training routine without spending any longer in the gym? I don’t mean you have to absolutely obliterate yourself and go from sprints on the treadmill to flying off the end and landing in the squat rack to then perform a non stop back to back circuit designed so you can actually see your heart beating through your chest.