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This months client of the month I had picked within the first 2 weeks of feb I think - the work rate, the effort has just been next level!
It’s been incredible to watch her almost every day, come in follow the plan, smash the workout and come back the next day to see the same. I don’t like giving out client of the month for the amount of weight loss or results they’re achieving, I think it send the wrong message and forces some unhealthy choices and habits to force the weight loss, force the new personal best etc because then quality could and probably would suffer. Instead I like to give out for things like attitude, hard work, resilience, consistently all these other traits that cause healthy, life long habits that make sure you’ll always be doing the best you can, having said all that the results that this client is getting are incredible, she’s dropping kilos a month and the way she’s training and following nutrition advice means that should cause a continuous trend. So without any more waiting around the client of the month is................. LEAZA FERGUS! Well Done! Keep up the amazing hard work, the attitude and the application of advice and we’ll smash your goals! I can’t wait to see your end transformation!
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The 5 things you should do when you STOP a diet
It’s very easy to focus on your diet and just doing that however when you stop dieting or come off your diet what you do next is more important than the diet itself, as what you do next can have disastrous effects on all your effort and hard work you have just put in. Some people will lose a lot of weight, look and feel incredible but deep down believe they are still a fat person, that they don’t deserve the body they now have, that they’re lying to themselves and everyone else being this weight, I come across this feeling A LOT in my role, people believing that they just shouldn’t be happy, that they don’t deserve it for some reason. Knowing people have the chance to be truly happy and comfortable in there ‘new’ body but feel like they don’t deserve it makes me feel sad! If you have done the work, you have got the results and you love the way you look, you NEED to make sure you keep it, beat your mental demons and stay happy. So when you come off your diet what you do now is essential to keeping your ‘new’ body and newly found confidence. Here’s the top 5 things to do now:
Losing weight is SO easy that’s why so many people do it every year, but 95% of diets ‘fail’ that failure rate is that high because people lose weight and a week later put it all back on, people lose loads of weight feel like they aren’t them selves anymore, even there friends will say dumb stuff like I preferred you being fat, you were funnier, FUCK THOSE ‘FRIENDS’ any friend who stops liking you because you want to become healthier, leaner and aren’t the same as before isn’t a real friend, they are a selfish person who wants you to be the same old person so they feel good about themselves that they can’t change but you can, and it’s the exact same with office colleagues, who say things like ‘you don’t need to lose weight you look good now’, ‘you should enjoy yourself while you can and lose weight in the future’ or ‘you do you bother going to the gym, you aren’t a gym person, just be yourself’ FUCK THEM! YOUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, PUT YOURSELF FIRST - I’m sorry if you lose friends because of your weight loss I really am, but now you have the opportunity of better overall health, find new friends who put theirs and you health first but don’t take the world too seriously like vegans do. Fitness isn’t a cult, don’t be draw into one. Sorry for the rant! Good luck with your diets! Keep the weight off! Be Happy and Be Strong 💪 Dan  It's unfortunately that time of the year where you start to stop going to the gym, you get tired, you haven't seen the results, you realise it's harder than it is, you realise that it rains a lot and takes up more of your time but those unfortunately aren't good enough excuses.
Any way regardless of the excuses, we're here to talk about what you do to get back into the gym! The first step is to plan your time, plan your weeks, make a schedule plan to go to the gym 3-4 times a week, spend an hour, plan your travel time. This will give a structure, it will help you to not have to rely on will power to go to the gym, your know you have to go at a certain time so just you go, it's like shopping, it's not fun, you know you have to do it and it takes little will power, make the gym the same sort of thing. The second step is to think about the exercise you like to do and plan your sessions to do them, get back to just enjoying training, turning up and working hard, yeah it shouldn't just be all fun and games, of course you have to work hard too. This will again build a habit of turning up and doing the work, getting used to training again, enjoying your workouts on the whole. It's a similar sort of principle with your diet, stop looking for a magical fix and cutting loads of things out your diet, just get your diet back to being consistent, add your favourite foods back in just make sure you limit them. Keep your calories consistent, keep your protein high and just do the basics right and consistently, this in itself might actually lead to some weight loss, But it's about principles and getting them consistent. None of this takes that much effort but once you get the principles and basics right and CONSISTENT you can achieve any goal your put your mind too! You have to just not give up or give in to temptations, remind yourself of WHY you are doing this, WHAT it means to you and maybe your family, HOW it will affect you if you don't get to your goal. This is why I'm a huge advocate of writing things down on white boards or your home screen somewhere you can see your goals and somewhere you can't escape. Don't be one of those people who get to 40-50 years old and regret not looking after your body when you were younger, take action now! Get back to it - you got this!! Dan What to do in the gym when it’s mega busy!
Firstly, I want to start by saying - I hope you had a great Christmas! Ate good food, came off your phones and enjoyed your families company or just enjoyed the time alone. Now that’s over everyone will be rushing to sign up for a gym membership, highly motivated by the weight you put on during Christmas and before. The common belief is cardio = weight loss so when you join and go to the gym expect the cardio area to be full, every machine in use and maybe even a queue, it has been know to happen. The best thing to do if you haven’t been to the gym in a long time is to go and find a space you can stretch, do mobility and basic movement work every machine will be taken with everyone going a 1000 miles per hour to smash their resolution of weight loss and unfortunately almost all of them will fail, it sucks but it’s true! So why do the same as everyone?! Find a spot in the gym when you can practise movement, learn to body weight squat, pain free and perfectly, learn to do press ups, lunges, planks etc, just work on the basics, get used to coming to the gym, at the moment making it a habit is the most important thing, it’s going to be boring and frustrating, but if you can preserve through this month the gym gets quieter around mid Feb, and then you get a proper plan together you can understand the trends in your gym, for example, Monday in my gym everyone is on everything, then Tuesday it’s mostly upper body equipment. Find your gym trends, stick to the basics at first, body weight movements and mobility, then attack the gym and get your results from mid Feb onwards, if you genuinely don’t know what to do, Make sure you invest in a good PT, I promise you it pays off, a good PT will make sure you get your results and will make sure they stay! Speaking of which if you want to start in the best way and get ahead of the pack, let me coach you, book your consultation today! How to pick unstoppable New Years resolutions!
DON’T! Yeah, it’s something like 80-90% of New Years resolutions fail, why? It’s because people pick stupid stuff like, learn a language or never eat chocolate again, learn how to dance, quit smoking. These are all the end goal, do you even start with these! Instead write better more true goals, notice I wrote true not realistic! A example of a true goal, “take part in a salsa competition by the end of the year, I’ll do this by practising just 2 hours a week, classes are every Wednesday and Thursday, I have found a class that is near my work so I can go straight there to practise, the competition tends to be mid-November which gives me roughly 100 practise sessions.” “My goal is to stop smoking, I’m currently smoking 20 a day, I don’t want to smoke at all by the next new year, I will achieve this by quitting 1 cigarette a week for 16 weeks, I will then change and cut a cigarette out every 10 days, leaving 1 cigarette after 30 days, I’ll then stop cigarettes completely and any withdrawals I get I will use gums or tablets to get a nicotine hit, after 30 days of not smoking I’ll quit all products, the money I’ll save from stopping to smoke will be £30 a month, that will be spent In feb next year on getting my teeth whitened and a new gym membership.” These are a true goals, they are specific they detail the HABITS you have to form to stop/start something, the end goal is almost irrelevant if you aren’t building the habits to get that goal. So make sure when you pick the habits, don’t just say them, build some intent around them, Hand write them out and put them on a white board or on your fridge or somewhere you can see them everyday, make sure you ask someone to keep you a reward, these kind of goals don’t give you a quick return, you don’t see an immediate impact in your life so set milestones and reward yourself, not with food! It doesn’t have to be a big reward, it can be as simple as I’ll reward my self when I get down to 15 cigarettes with a cinema trip, a new dress from ASOS, and then set bigger goals, like ‘when I completely stop I’ll get my teeth whitened’ this is an expensive reward but you deserve it! Well done. Another thing that helps is reframe who you are, don’t say things like I’m a smoke, say to people ‘I don’t smoke anymore’ even if you haven’t, you aren’t a smoker, just make sure you quit! So the points are: Set true goals, make them huge, make them extravagant but make sure you HAND WRITE them and HOW you will achieve them, what it means when you DO get you goals and what it means if you DON’T get your goals, the HABITS you will build, the REWARDS you will give yourself and make you you find someone who will keep you ACCOUNTABLE. Have an incredible 2020 and welcome to a decade!! I was speaking to a member the other day about what to when you’re training and getting bored,
this seems to be quite a big problem as it comes up quite a lot when speaking to member and clients when they’re training on the own. If you’re trying to train and you’re bored the problem doesn’t lie in the boredom itself, its the effect that being bored has on your willingness to try harder and keep your effort levels as high as they should. So first to do is find a playlist that motivates you, I have a few go to songs when I’m building up that get me in the zone to train but once I’m training I then have 2 playlists, one to keep me in the zone and motivated to push harder and one to my mind occupied on the lyrics and the nostalgia the songs offer, for example, in the training with intent playlist I have things like, rock, heavy metal, hip hop, rap, in the other one, I have artists like Uncle drunker, Taylor swift, coolio, drake loads more, like I said that playlist to get me to sing along to the music, it’s to make think about he music rather than the training. Another reason people get bored on there own is because training by yourself not speaking to people can be lonely, for this I suggest 2 things, go out for a long walk by yourself, like a 1-3 hour walk, no music, no phone, just you and the walk, it’s a form of meditation that some call active meditation, but this will help you get you used to just being by yourself, being comfortable with the thoughts you have and the feelings you have,if you can’t be comfortable with who and how you are, I genuinely believe you will never be truly free and happy, which is a little deep, but it’s something for you to explore. The other thing and a lot less deep, is to listen to a long form podcast, a long for a podcast is a podcast over 1 hour, I much prefer these, the speaking can get his/her point across much better, they can elaborate and explain, you learn a lot more and it’s more interactive, some long form podcasts I can recommend are; Sam Harris - Mindfulness Joe Rogan - not the MMA or comedian guests, they’re good, but you don’t learn anything useful, so make sure you pick the ones with the other guests! Shane Parish - the knowledge project But if you do a quick google search, then you’ll find hundreds of recommendations. 2 more nd then that’s it, The other one and to be honest the best one as there has been many study’s showing that training with someone will improve performance, I don’t mean just a coach, a friend, colleague whoever you can train with, train with them, the coach would be best as you can Learn proper technique and loads of other stuff and they are there with the purpose of improving your workout among other things, so train with someone! The last and final thing is a really really short one, it’s this... Everyone gets bored in training sometimes, get over yourself and push through, just keep going, doing a half assed workout is better than no workout, mix it up try something new but keep going. This guide is written for winter but in truth it’s how to stay motivated all the time, the principles in this are principles, they aren’t quick tips that give you instant relief. These are like healing the illness rather than just keep taking paracetamol.
I know exactly how you feel at this time of the year, you feel tired, you feel burnt out, you feel like your stalling in the gym, you just want to go home be in the warm and unwind from another long week at work. The truth is although these might be all true, you feel like this year-round, however you used to have something to look forward to, you had a holiday, you had events, weddings, nights out! All these things keep you motivated and excited and at the risk of sounding sad, you now have nothing. GOOD NEWS THOUGH! Too fix this one little issue all you have to is find something to aim for, as it’s so cold and the cold wind is hard on your skin, why don’t you book yourself in for a spa day, get a facial, massage, get a new bikini, they will be in a clearance section so get a good one in the sale! Another problem with motivation is people want to focus on the biggest wins, because of female magazines and internet wonder transformation, the expectation is losing 10kg in 4 weeks, which for most women, just won’t happen, so instead of waiting for the biggest wins focus on the small wins, you lost 0.5kg this week? Well done, you’re losing! You did more weight on squats this week? Well done! You stuck to your diet and was consistent last week? Well done! Focus on the small wins, anything you can do to progress and any level of progression is progression so be happy! The last one to keep you motivated is to do 2 things! Either just accept that at this time you aren’t motivated but it’s something you have to do so keep going, keep turning up and wait for the motivation to come back or take a week off, a week off your diet and week off training, this one is tricky as you need to make sure you come back, so you need to know yourself when picking this last one, if you do take a week off and after the week the motivation might not be come back in that week, if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter get back to it and carry on, DO NOT take a 2nd week off otherwise you just won’t come back, take 1 week and then that’s it back to it, if you do take the week off and you feel motivated to go back then quality! Use that to get a bigger win when you go back to make sure that motivation doesn’t go again. I really hope this helps, like always if you need me to help you find a way to apply this then get in touch, email me and I’ll help! Healthy and Happy regards! Dan Sometimes you have to do something you don’t to want to do and be hungry, unfortunately lose weight most likely means some level of hunger.
However you can minimise the hunger by eating specific foods, quantities and other techniques. First we can go over to hunger and techniques of how to control it when you do get hungry. So when those hunger pains comes on, you can control it by first drinking water. I don’t mean a sip, I mean half a glass to a full glass of water, a lot of the hunger feelings are actually just first, think about when you last drank some water, if it was more than 1 hour ago definitely have a drink, if it was less than 30 minutes then maybe it is actually hunger, which we’ll go over later. Another thing to do when you get hungry is Nap! It sounds strange and you might not be able to do it however, research has shown that a lack of sleep can lead to 2 things! Firstly you’re more liking to pick ‘comfort’ foods, I.e chocolate, cookies, high calorie, poor food quality food, and secondly, your hormones ‘ghrelin’ and ‘leptin’ (appetite hormones) don’t balance each other out, so you’re more likely to still be hungry after a meal and not be able to be full or feel full. So if you had a really crap sleep the night before try and nap, try and catch up and it might help you with the deficit, it will also make you more productive. The third and last suggestion is to eat, however and it’s a big however, you can only eat very low calorie, high fibre fruit/veg, things like, celery sticks, apple, strawberries, if you make room in your calories for higher calorie fruit and veg that would be better do you can have a fruit salad or something like that but if you haven’t, stick to celery! Actually I’ll sneak another quick point, hey don’t say I don’t give you value! The last one is walking! Go for a walk, get some fresh air, do something, sometimes you get hungry through boredom, it isn’t true hunger, it’s just ‘I’m bored, I want some food’ this happens all the time at the weekend for most people. There’s only so much Netflix you can handle. Alright, now we have gone over what to do when hunger strikes now we can learn how to minimise getting it in a first place. The first thing to do is plan your food for the day, plan breakfasts, plan sacks, plan meals everything, that way when you can eat when you know when you get hungry, I don’t get the 3/4pm hunger, but I know a lot of people do so you would put a snack there. Learn your food habits and use the habits that’s already there, changing a habit is easy compared to creating a new habit, so if you get up the photocopier, the stock cupboard,the meeting room where ever, you put a habit on top of that, so you get a glass of water before the meeting, you get the lift 2 floors below and walk up the stairs to the meeting room. Whatever you can do to add a healthy habit on top of a existing habit do, it’s called habit stacking and it’s an incredible tool. The second thing you can do is eat high volumes of food, things like soup, you can eat a highly flavoured soup and 3 litres worth and still keep it under 100 calories. Soups with slow cooked meats can be a very easy and great way to add high volumes of food, same with low calories veg, things like mushrooms, spinach, can be a really easy way to add a lot of volume too food to keep you fuller for longer. The third thing is that magic pill again... water!!! Have a glass of water before, during and after a meal, and I can almost guarantee you will feel very full and will stay full for some time after! A study was done, with the same technique but with a segment of Apple, before and after the meal, and participants found they couldn’t eat as much, this is a great way to control your appetite before an evening meal, eat some fruit, veg before you go out you won’t eat as much and thus hopefully stay in your deficit. I hope these help you, please let me know if I can help you more, just send me an email at dangrimes@applied-fitness.co.uk Have a great week, Go get your goals! Dan How to survive a workout that wants to kill you!
Today I made a cross-fit style workout, one that would be enough of a muscle stimulus where I wouldn’t lose strength or muscle mass in my 2 weeks of different style training before going back into a strength/hyper trophy phase whilst also Giving me a big boost to my cardio and lung capacity. Now I don’t like taking easy when I train, I like giving it everything I have, all my attention, my energy goes into that session, so even though I had done something like this before and I knew how it would make me feel, I thought yeah it’s fine, I’ll soldier through, I’ll be alright.... I wasn’t! I had do the first 5 mini circuits, felt out of breathe and a bit tired but felt okay, felt like I would be alright to complete the next set of mini circuits, little did I know just how much sprints would absolutely rock my world! 10 second sprints against the resistance on the s-drive, I done it, same again felt tired and out of breathe but okay, completely my kettlebell but I was still as out of breathe from my sprints as before so I sat down to catch my breathe my breathe never got caught, while I sat there I re-evaluated you life, why couldn’t I of just taken it a bit easier. After a few minutes the world started spinning and I felt my stomach going, went to the toilet and then all the life went out of me, a massive wave of tiredness, light headed, dizzy etc. So went outside got some air to try and make myself feel better, it didn’t work so I sat in the staff room, as soon as I sat down, I felt so exhausted, more exhausted than I think I have ever felt! I put my head on the table and feel asleep even though there was a very loud spin class going on next door. Why am I telling you all this because, I have been training for almost 10 years on and off in total, even I experience things like your first day in the gym doing a class, a new workout etc, maybe you done a normal workout but got severe DOMS and felt like you never wanted to train again? That you? Look even though I went through that today and feel like I never want to do anything like that again, I’m doing it tomorrow, same set up with different exercises, I have to start somewhere and build up my fitness again, I have to try again and again and keep going! No matter how many bands workouts you have you still worked out you still turned up after and it’s that kind of attitude which mean you can achieve your goals. You turn up. PANIC!!! QUICK CUT OUT ALL THE FOOD AN GO ON A 'JUICE DETOX'!!!
No don't be an idiot! The scale reflect your relationship to gravity at that second in time, they will fluctuate and the more you stress about it the slower they will be lower. Speaking of which, stress is a factor that can help get the scales moving and slow them down, if you have a crap day at work, or something is happening that is stressing you out in life you retain more water which means the scales wont move as quick, it also means that you could pick poor food choices to make yourself feel better, called comfort eating, this could actually cause you to gain weight/fat rather than lose weight, so if the scale doesn't move don't worry just, be consistent and you will help to get it going again. Another thing that affects the scales are carbs/salt both of these cause water retention in the muscles so if you have a very high meal the day or 2 days before the weigh in you might notice your weight actually go up, thats because of the high salt/carb meal. So those are the things that can affect the scales now to get them moving again, ask yourself 4 questions - How was my sleep this week? Was I consistent with my diet? Was I as active this week? Have I had a high salt/carb meal recently? if you have been consistent with your diet and exercise, you haven't had a high carb/salt meal, your sleep has been good, then wait a week or 2. if it still doesn't move then reassess your diet if you aren't sure how to that, send me an email an I'll be happy to help. The fixes to your diet may come from cutting your calorie to create that calorie deficit,or changing your macro amount to make it easier to stick to the calories in the deficit, more or add an extra session. |
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