Throughout life you come across (and end up hanging out with) all kinds of people. Despite the diversity they often fall into two very important categories in terms of how you're left feeling after your time together. We refer to them as "radiators" or "drains." Taking a moment to decipher who you spend most of your time with can make a big difference to your own health.
A client recently said to me.... “Keris I feel like you’re superhuman with all your lecturing, yoga and running. I’m so far away from where I’d like to be, it’s frustrating and at times feels pointless!”
I haven’t lost the plot but you can be forgiven for thinking so with a title like that! So you might be wondering what do these three things have in common. The answer is quite simply that they all made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, they almost stopped me in my tracks and held me back from doing something I felt passionate about.
We LOVE Christmas but it’s easy to get carried away with all the booze, biscuits and boxes of chocolates on offer around the clock. Whilst it’s great to indulge a little with friends and family and get stuck into the festivities you don’t want to end the year feeling miserable because you’ve gained weight, you’re knackered, bloated and your skin is suffering a breakout. All of this can put you in a negative mood and make you no good company to be around, not an ideal mindset to kick off 2018 .
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.
I posted on Facebook a while back that perhaps there's a little too much effort going on when it comes to fat loss and people might be missing some quick wins which could be achieved by kicking back a little and simplifying things. When an individual decides they want to change their body composition and focus on getting healthy it often starts off all guns blazing. There are plans to eat boat loads of steamed kale, smash HIIT sessions daily and answer to no one but the weighing scales.
It’s that time of year again when many of us renew our resolutions for the year. The easy thing to do here (and most common in our experience) is to come up with a fat loss goal; drop a dress size, get a six pack, fit into my skinny jeans again, blah blah. We always aim to steer people away from these goals as they're based upon a negative relationship with your body for a start, plus it’s no fun weighing and measuring your food and your waistline day in day out. In fact the harder people pursue this goal the more likely they are to fail at it.
Probably one of the most popular questions we come across this time of year is how to have your Xmas cake and eat it without piling on the pounds. This is completely understandable as there's so much more temptation around the festive period, a greater desire to let your hair down, not to mentioned some added stressors to cope with as we tackle the xmas shopping in the gloomy, wet weather etc, etc. One thing to emphasis here is that we are just like you. We have a few more treats than we usually do around December, crave comfort foods with the darker mornings and shorter days and it is Christmas after all!
If you have followed Fitter Food for some time now you'll know that we’ve been going on for years about the essentials of fat loss which include eating nutritious food, moving daily, exercising a few times a week, sleeping soundly and managing stress. All of these support optimal hormone health and the body's natural mechanisms for healthy weight management. Everyone needs to master the basics before they progress to more advanced protocols. However, we also acknowledge that some people's bodies need an extra nudge to get results or maybe your fat loss has stalled a little. The following are just a few simple steps you can implement that can kick your metabolism into action.
It's been a pretty busy couple of months at Fitter Food headquarters (aka Matt's teenage bedroom since we moved back in with his Mum). We've been running on adrenalin, coffee and Quest bars for a few weeks to make sure our book is ready for Christmas and we also ran our final Fitter Food Academy this weekend. We are fully aware of the damaging effects chronic stress has on our body, so now our biggest projects are done and dusted it's time for both of us to thank our bodies for powering us through and invest back a little TLC.
This week is certainly up there as one of the most stressful I've had all year. The deadline to get our book to the printers is this Friday. With recipe testing, editing, referencing, macronutrient information and image design to finish, my 'to do' list went way beyond overwhelming at times. Running a business I've been here before and luckily I've made time to develop coping mechanisms that enable me to nail these projects without letting my health suffer in the process. I thought I would share with you 3 things that really helped me over the last few days when the going got really tough.
At Fitter Food we've been in the industry a good few years now and had the opportunity to work with thousands of individuals both in person and online. We have helped people of all shapes and sizes with very different starting points, different goals and barriers to progress. This experience has allowed us to develop different strategies and approaches to ensure people get results, however, they all have one thing in common and start in the same place.