My Hints and Tips

This is my chance to share some of the top tips I've favoured over my years in the health and fitness industry. Ones that do make a difference - as I'm not someone for futile new habits. Everything that works does so for a reason!

• Most people I've known and worked with who've always struggled losing fat (not weight) have been irregular eaters. Three times a day isn't often enough if you're looking to shift fat. So here goes:
• Eat 5 times a day! 3 meals and 2 snacks.
• In each meal or snack make sure you're mixing carbohydrate AND PROTEIN!
• Why protein? Because it releases energy slowly and therefore helps stabilise the blood sugar levels. Getting the blood sugar levels steady is KEY to health and fat loss.
• GET MORE ADVENTUROUS WITH YOUR PROTEINS: Too much meat protein is heavy going on the liver - widen your choices, think of vegetable proteins: Hummus, chickpea dishes, lentils, tofu, nuts, seeds, soya...
• How much? Not much, think of a snack being something that sits in the palm of one of your hands, say a pear and some almonds or a healthy cracker with a spoonful of hummus.
• You'll be amazed how eating like this keeps energy levels up throughout the day AND, BEST OF ALL, you won't go hungry!

Healthy Fish Cakes

• Mix up 4 tbsp parsley, 2 x spring onions, 2 x cloves of garlic, half a teaspoon lime zest, 2 beaten eggs and pepper with 250g of salmon, and gently fry.
• Add a cucumber salsa - one cucumber diced, 2 tbsp coriander, 1 juice of lime, 1 red chilli and black pepper
• Admittedly some of the ingredients are missing to make these stick well together so if you want to add some ground rye bread, that'll make them more 'solid'.

New Tastes & Ideas - A recipe I give to my BOOTcampers!

Coriander lime pesto and salmon:

• Bunch of coriander
• juice of one lime
• 2 gloves of garlic
• ground black pepper
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons flaked toasted almonds

Combine the above. Bake salmon at 200c for 10 minutes. Smooth pesto over the vegetables and salmon!

Recommended Yoga Moves

1. The Warrior

Bend the front leg, keep the rear leg straight, reach arms to the sky, hands either together or apart, look at the hands. Hips, chest and shoulders are square to the front, back foot remains flat. Hold as long as you like.

This opens up the hips, nice ab stretch lengthens the back of the thigh, tones the legs.

2. The Power Twist

Bend the right leg. Cross the left elbow over your right thigh, make a fist with your right hand and close the left. Turn your chest towards the sky, the back foot can be raised or flat. Back leg is straight.

This move rotates the spine, opens the chest and shoulders and is said to be revitalising! 

3. The Airplane

Stand on one leg keeping it straight. The other is in the air, tip forward like a water pump, arms are alongside the body.

Great for balance and control, feel supporting leg working well but mid section gets a part of the work out too. 

Energising Summer Smoothie!

This recipe comes from my friend Emiko who wrote the recipes for my book; Tidy the Temple.

2 limes, 1 lemon, 2 pears, 3 oranges and a sprig of mint.

Juice the above all together or if you don't have a juicer, blend them. I feel totally energised with these lemon smoothies, they're great.

Should I train when I'm unwell?

No. However, depending on how unwell you are that would obviously influence your decision. You may even start to exercise and realise that it is much too ambitious for you and wisely decide to leave it.

On the other hand, you may get going and, thanks to the release of endorphins, feel a bit better... but later on that day or shortly after the session, the endorphins will wear off and the sickness will return, quite often worse than before.

Think of it like this; there is no gain to be made in training when you're unwell. Being unwell is a sign that the body needs to rest and recharge. To train is to deny the body of his healing function and asking it to spread what little energy is left too thin. If the body is throwing out symptoms of sickness and fatigue, don't use up it's precious remaining energy on a useless training session.

The body uses half (yes 50%!) of it's energy in digestion alone. This is why with sickness it is sometimes an idea to fast (as in stop eating!) to speed up recovery and allow the body to perform 100% on healing itself. 

Feeling a little low emotionally is a different matter. Sometimes we can confuse this with feeling unwell. Feeling down is enough to stop an appetite for many things but in this case, exercise is obviously a great boost and healer and should be encouraged without excuse!

Fitness Tip

Haven't exercised in a while or been a long time out of routine?

To get the muscles back into a great place to build form, go for high reps - as many as 30 for each muscle group. It seems tedious but you'll be laying down a great base to sculpt, build and develop from. Try this for two weeks. You'll be pleased you have.

Skipping this phase is like not tying your new shrubs up for a heavy winter snow, the branches will snap with the strain and be in trouble next season.