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… Read more->

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… Read more->

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.