It’s the start of a brand New Year, so now is the time to start about reaching your fat loss goals for 2012. Here is my New Year Fat Loss Guide to set you on the right track to reaching your fat loss goals.

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Get rid of calorie dense foods.

I often work with people that tell me ‘I really don’t eat that much, I can’t understand why I don’t lose weight.’ Whilst portion size is obviously an important factor, it is not nearly as important as the TYPE of food you are eating. It’s all very well not eating much, but if what you are eating is calorie dense you are still going to have a high total calorie intake.

For example, a small chocolate can contain up to 100 calories. A small biscuit up to 200 calories. Think how easy it would be to go through a few chocolates and a few biscuits a day. You could be up at 1000 calories without even feeling like you have really eaten anything. And of course because they have no good nutritional value they will make your body crave more food rather than filling you up.

Chocolates and biscuits are just 2 examples. Cheese, crisps, cakes and of course alcohol are just a few other calories dense foods.

Compare these 2 sweet foods;

100 gram chocolate brownie; 400 calories

100 grams blueberries; 55 calories.

I know you may be thinking ‘yeah but I would rather have the brownie.’ Well that may be true, but the blueberries will give the sweet sugary taste you are after without all the calories. And provide you with a lot of vitamins and minerals that will fill you up more.

Today’s Takeaway – Ditch the fatty, sugary calorie dense foods. Get them out of your diet and you calorie intake will plummet, and so in turn will your weight.

As much as I believe that December is just as good a time as any of get fit and burn fat I’m also realistic enough to know that for most people this month is about damage limitation. In my experience it’s not just the few days over Christmas where people overindulge, it’s the few weeks leading up to it as well! This is obviously a bit of a problem, because whilst there’s only so much damage you can do over the course of a few days, but A LOT of damage can be done over the course of a few weeks.

Here are my top 3 tips to avoid gaining weight this December;

1/ Avoid the nibbles. There a lots of parties, lunches, dinners, drinks etc. at this time of year. Of course you want to treat yourself a bit, but steer clear of the ‘nibbles’ as much as possible. By nibbles i mean stuff like crisps, dips, mice pies etc. For example most mince pies are 300/350 each! Add a bit of cream and you’re up at 500! That’s a main meal! So be aware of these high calorie, un-filling snacks and steer clear when possible.

2/ 2 drinks at a time. That sounds good doesn’t it! Well it’s not quite what you think I’m afraid. Whether you’re at home or out and have an alcoholic drink, make yourself drink a glass of water for every glass of booze you have. This will slow your drinking and help to stop you getting dehydrated and getting cravings.

3/ Work it off! Never is exercise more important that when your consuming more calories. If you’re taking in say 200 extra calories a day on average, how can you balance it out? BURN IT OFF! 15/20 minutes depending on your fitness level could burn 200 calories easily. So have a look at some of the workouts on this blog for some great calorie burning workouts.

Today’s Takeaway – December doesn’t have to mean let yourself go until the New Year. Follow these 3 simple steps and you will avoid weight gain this holiday season.

Everyone is so busy these days, it is unrealistic for me as a trainer to expect everyone to go to the gym every day. It’s not just the 45/60 minutes in the gym, it’s the travelling back and forth, changing, showering, etc. The whole process takes over 2 hours. Who has that sort of time?! So home workouts are the thing of the future – but with your obviously limited resources you must know what you are doing to get a good home workout.

Rule 1 – Set Yourself an Appointment

If you just wake up every day with the intention of ‘exercising at some point,’ the chances are it simply won’t happen. Whenever suits you, first thing in the morning, when you get in from work, it doesn’t matter, the key point is you make an appointment to do it at a certain time. That way you know exactly when it is going to happen and you can’t put it off and eventually not do it!

Rule 2 – Be Realistic With Time

Don’t plan to workout for an hour a day unless you can guarantee you can spare the time. You are much better of planning a daily 20/30 minute workout that fits into your routine and doesn’t take up too much of your time. Frequency of exercise is more important than duration.

Rule 3 – Keep it Varied

Mix up what you do. So many people buy fitness equipment like a bike or cross trainer that just acts as a clothes horse after a few weeks. Why? Because it’s too boring and monotonous ( and not that effective either!). Set yourself a circuit of total body exercises. Here is a great circuit which you need no equipment for;

1/ Press Ups

2/ Squats

3/ Front Plank

4/ Lunges

5/ Side Plank

Just do each exercise for as long, or for as many reps as you can.

Today’s Takeaway: You can workout and lose weight by working out at home, a gym membership is by no means a necessity. So what are you waiting for?!OME

Everyone wants to work their stomach. The stomach is a very common area to carry a little excess weight so burning fat and toning up around the stomach is high on everyone’s hit list. But all your hard work and effort can be in vain if you don’t follow this one simple rule;

If you want a flat stomach you must be able to engage your stomach muscles during your entire workout. So whether you are doing cardio on the bike or rower, or doing squats or press-ups you are still working your core. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DOING A STOMACH EXERCISE TO WORK THE STOMACH MUSCLES!

I know the statement above may seem a little odd, but its true. You should be using your core muscles during your entire workout. In fact I would recommend only spending a small proportion of your workout doing ‘stomach specific’ exercises such as sit-ups.

So how do you do this? Imagine someone went to tap you on the stomach. What would you do? Hopefully you would brace your stomach muscles slightly. This is what you need to be doing throughout your workout. Don’t over strain and over-tense, just hold enough tension so all your core muscles are engaged. And make sure you keep your back flat and straight at all times no matter what your are doing.

Learn and perfect this and your stomach muscles will be working and burning fat during your entire workout. And what’s more, this will be happening whilst you are burning fat from others areas all at the same time.

Today’s Takeaway – So you don’t actually need to do many ‘stomach exercises’ to get a flat stomach. Engage your core throughout your workouts for flat stomach results.

Which foods should you eat with the skin on, and with which foods should you remove the skin before eating them? The answer to this question definitely varies depending on what you are eating, so I will break it down into 3 categories;

1/ Fruits and Vegetables

As a rule, a lot of the goodness in fruits and vegetables is in the skin. (Obviously i’m just talking about soft skin fruits such as apples and pears, i’m not suggesting you eat the skin on a melon or kiwi!) So you miss out on a lot of the vitamins, minerals, fibre, etc if you don’t eat the skin.

That being said the skin is the part of the fruit that is most exposed to any pesticides and chemicals that are used on them. So where possible buy organic to avoid this, but if not at least make sure they get a really good wash.

2/ Meat

Skin from meat such as chicken or turkey is very high in fat, and therefore also high in calories. Not just fat, it’s saturated fat that is very bad for your health. And on top of this there is no nutritional value to the skin, i.e. no nutrients that your body can use. So from a health and weight management perspective, meat skin is a definite no-no.

3/ Fish

Skin on fish is perhaps the most controversial area. Firstly, as with fruits and vegetables, there is a lot of goodness in the skin. Particularly in oily fish such as salmon and mackerel. A lot of the omega 3′s are in or just underneath the skin.

However a lot of the fat is also in or just underneath the skin, which means eating it will increase the calorific value of your meal.

So if you are trying to cut calories and lose weight I would keep the skin off. If you are trying to be as healthy as possible and  boost your intake of omega 3′s I would leave ther skin on.

Today’s Takeaway – As you can see some ‘skins’ are good for you and some aren’t. Be sure to make the right choices are eating/not eating the skin can make a big difference to you intake of nutrients and calorific intake.

Here are 3 meals that from my experience are fairly standard to what a lot of peolpe who are in their words ‘fairly healthy’ may consume. Watch how slight changes in the meals leads to over a 1000 calories a day less consumed! And I haven’t even included what could be lost from changing what you eat between meals;

Toast:
2 slices thick bread = 220 calories
20 grams butter/jam = 150 calories
Total = 370 calories

Standard serving of porridge;
100ml skimmed milk – 35 calories
45 grams oats – 165 calories
Handful of blubberies (40 grams) – 25 calories
Total = 225 calories

Calories saved = 145. And what’s more the oats are a slow release carb that will leave you feeling fuller for longer than the bread.

Tuna Mayonaise Sandwich
2 Slices Thick Bread – 220 calories
Tin of tuna – 200 calories (+75 calories from the residual oil) = 275
30 grams mayonaise – 100 calories
Salad – 20 calories
Packet of Crisps = 150 calories
Total = 765

Tuna Salad

Tin of Tuna (in spring water not oil) – 200 calories

2 ryvita – 60 calories

Large mixed salad – 60 calories

Splash of balsamic vinegar – 10 calories

Total – 330 calories

Calories saved = 435

Steak and Baked Potato

200 grams beef – Up to 600 calories depending on how you cook it and what cut of meat it is.

180 grams (1 medium) baked potato – 245 calories

Total - 845 calories 

Prwans with Sweet Potato

200 grams of prawns – 200 calories.

180 grams sweet potato – 103 calories

Total – 303 calories

Calories saved = 54

Toaday’s Takeaway – You’ll notice that in all the above examples you are eating the same amount, if not more food. But yet your saving yourself 1122 calories! And what’s more  because the foods you are eating are metabolism boosters you will be burning more fat and calories naturally!

What do I mean by ‘devils?’ I use the word devils due the negative, fat gaining/storing effect the substances I am going to talk about have on your body. Why do I call them ‘white’ devils? Quite simply because all the substances are white!

There are 4 main categories of white devils;

1/ White Flour

2/ White (table) salt

3/ White sugar

4/ White starches (i.e. bread, pasta, rice).

All the above foods are white for a reason, they have been stripped of all their natural goodness and have a load of nasty preservatives, e-numbers and other junk added to them. In their pure natural ‘brown’ form they are far better for you. (In the case of salt you obviously can’t get a ‘brown’ alternative,’ you should go for natural sea salt). 

This means that rather than the food being in its natural form and being of some nutritional value to your body, its totally refined and totally useless to your body. And because your body has no use for it, it will end up being stored as fat.

That’s not to say that brown sugar and brown flour are really good for you and you can eat as much as you like. That’s obviously not true as they are still calorie dense foods. But nevertheless they are FAR FAR better for you and your waistline than the horrible refined alternatives.

Today’s Takeaway -Avoid the white devils like the plague. Always go for the natural ‘brown’ option instead.

If you have read my blog posts before you will know that I am not a big fan of traditional forms of cardio such as running, cycling, cross trainer, etc that most people tend to do.

However that doesn’t mean there is no place for cardio in your workout routines. But of you are going to to do cardio you MUST do it right.

Most people will do what I call ‘constant cardio.’  This means they will basically go to the gym, get on the treadmill or cross trainer, put it at a certain speed and leave it there for a set amount of time or until they have burnt a set amount of calories.

This really is the least effective way to workout and burn fat.

Here are some other far more beneficial options. But they all rely of one key, very important variable – changing the speed and intensity of your workout constantly.

I will use the treadmill as an example, but the same thing could just as easily be replicated running outside or on any other cardio machine. I will also base the following on a 20 minute workout.

Option A -2 minutes normal speed, then 2 minutes faster. So you walk/jog at a comfortable speed for 2 minutes then increase it so you are working harder for minutes. Change between the 2 until your 20 minutes are up.

Option B – 1 minute normal, then 1 minute faster. Same routine as above.

Option C – 2 minutes normal, 30 seconds sprint. But your REALLY have to go for it during those 30 seconds.

Today’s Takeaway – All of the 3 options above (and ideally you should doa  combination of all 3) are far more effective then ‘traditional cardio.’

When you’ve been away on holiday the chances are you may have overindulged and gained a few pounds. So going on a post holiday detox is exactly what you need to get rid of all the toxins in your body and lose any excess fat you may have gained. I’m not talking about a cabbage soup diet or anything like that, just certain things that I cut out for a limited time. Here’s my post holiday detox plan;

1/ Cut all all sugars (except the natural sugars from fruit). So that means no sugar in your tea/coffee and no deserts amongst other things.

2/ Nothing processed – Very rarely do I eat anything processed anyway, but anything from from a can, jar or anything that has a ‘shelf life’ in the supermarket is totally off the menu.

3/ No red meat – When I am at home I usually have red meat once or twice a week. But on holiday its at least double that, so to balance things out I will cut it out completely for a week when I get back.

4/  No alcohol. I must admit that alocohol is the biggest difference between my home diet, and my holiday diet. I will keep off alcohol during this detox.

5/ No cheese. Again, not something I do not eat a lot of at home anyway, but I eat more of it on holiday, so a cut it out totally for the detox.

6/ No starchy carbs – that means absolutely no pasta, rice bread or potatoes.

7/ Increase fruit and veggies. Getting as many vitamins and minerals into your system is one of the keys to this detox. So I eat more fruit and veg than usual, and make the colours as varied as possible.

How long do I do it for? Generally the length of time that I have been away. But you could do it for longer if you wanted.

Today’s Takeaway – The overall idea is to cut out saturated fat and sugar and stock up on vitamins and minerals. So it’s not a detox in the traditional sense, but following the above plan will definitely clense your system and get rid of any excess holiday weight.

When we go away on holiday we tend to forget about our fat loss aspirations. And to a degree that’s okay because you need a break and to let off a little steam once in a while. But whilst realistically you won’t lose fat on holiday, you don’t want to put a load on and undo the weeks and months of hard work you have been putting in.

Here’s the plan I follow when on holiday.

Breakfast - Fruit and yogurt at breakfast. At home I usually use fruit to snack on during the day, but on holiday to ensure I keep getting my 5 a day I have 2/3 pieces of fruit with natural yogurt in the mornings. That way, you don’t forget about it and get a low calorie healthy breakfast.

Lunch - Salads at lunch. There is no reason or need to have bread or any other starchy carb at lunch. I am not burning nearly as many calories on holiday as I do at home, so the carbs will not be used as energy, but stored as fat. I keep it healthy with tasty and varied salads with protein such as prawns/lean meat.

 Dinner – I have to say this is where I allow myself the freedom. I will choose what I want of the menu at dinner and I will have a drink or two.  But that does NOT mean I overeat. So many people eat more on holiday than at home. Why? You will only end up feeling bloated that evening and the next day. Enjoy your food, but don’t go crazy with the quantity.

Minimal Snacking – At home I usually have a small snack mid morning and mid afternoon. I keep this to a minimum on holiday as  I don’t need the extra calories as I am less active.

Exercise? – I am very active in my daily life, so I do use holidays as a chance to recharge the batteries and let my body recover. However that doesn’t mean I do nothing. I make sure I do a certain amount of swimming and walking every day. It’s nowhere near the intensity I exercise at when at home, but at least in burns a few calories and keep the metabolism ticking over.

Today’s Takeaway – Enjoy your holiday, but don’t go crazy. You will only end up feeling guilty about undoing all your good work.