For all your Personal Training, yoga therapy, nutritional advice and back pain management needs in Hull and East Riding, call/text or email me.
Nutrition
Optimising health means achieving an ideal weight. Weight loss features regularly in clients goals. The single biggest contributor to weight loss is diet. There are many different diets and theories about how to lose weight, but we are all unique human beings and we need to listen and learn from our own body and mind. I have found inspiration from a combination of different books, selecting ideas and approaches which seem to work for most people and I have summarised them below (if you want more detail, book a session and see if my approach works for you).
Books which I recommend are:
I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson
Clean and Lean by James Duigan
Fat around the Middle by Dr Marilyn Glenville
The Medicinal Chef by Dale Pinnock.
My top 6 tips for Success:
1)Plan your meals- plan for the week, shop with a list, or on the internet (so you aren't tempted by treats) ensuring you have the relevant ingredients to hand when you need them.
2) Radically reduce your sugar consumption (particularly fructose) No more than 6 teaspoons of sugar to be consumed in a day. When you look at a food label to convert the grams into teaspoons, divide by 4. eg. 20g of sugar equals 5 teaspoons of sugar. As a quick guide you should only pick food/drink with less than 5g of sugar per 100g. (Exception is dairy, where the first 4.8g of the sugar is lactose which is ok)
3)Watch your drinks- hidden sugars in fruit juices and fizzy drinks mean they should not be a regular feature in the diet. Only drink one caffeinated drink a day (caffeine stimulates the stress response causing fat to accumulate around your middle), Alcohol should feature rarely - ideally only a couple of small glasses of wine a week. Watch the enormous calorie and sugar count in your favourite milky coffees - some have more than 20 teaspoons of sugar in! Choose herbal teas, water and coconut water.
4)Eat clean - eat the food as close to its natural state as possible. Anything with an ingredients list with more than 5 items should be avoided, especially the ones with unpronounceable names!
5)Buy a smaller plate and keep portions small. Divide the plate into 3. Cover half the plate in vegetables or salad. Cover 1/4 plate with protein (meat, fish, cheese, eggs, tofu etc.) and the rest is for starchy carbohydrates, such as potatoes, rice, pasta. Personally I don't eat bread (apart from my superfood bread, see recipe tab), don't eat pasta, and very little rice. My maximum portion size would be 1 tablespoon of cooked rice. I favour Quinoa, or spiralised sweet potato or courgettes for the textural variation they provide instead of gluten, or heavy starch options. You can use lentils and beans, but personally find my digestive system doesn't like them!
6)Take time to eat. Be mindful, sit down and eliminate distractions like TV or reading the paper. Really concentrate on your food, notice the texture and taste, and give your brain time to register that you have eaten. It takes 15 minutes for signals from your stomach to reach the brain, protein provides the strongest signal so eat it first - there is no cut-off switch in the brain for sugar as the brain hasn't evolved fast enough to keep up with our changing environment, which is why you feel that you can continually eat and eat sugary foods.