Training Books from F.I.S.H.

Foundations for a Better Physique and The F.I.S.H. Training Log are available from the Homunculus Books Store for £5 each or as a FREE download. Follow the link below.


http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1604153

The Fat Burning Diet

I recently took a two week break from the 12 week challenge in order to visit Chicago and from there take a road trip to Missouri. The rest from training and dieting did a lot of good, allowing tired muscles and joints to recover fully.

I was also introduced to Jay Robb's book "The Fat Burning Diet", a wealth of information applicable to bodybuilders, athletes, and those simply seeking to shed a few pounds. Jay favours carbohydrate control but not to the extreme degree of Atkins. Carbs are restricted for 2 1/2 days (approximately 15-30g per meal) and then the evening meal of the third day is a carb load meal aimed to restore glycogen levels. In addition the Saturday evening meal is a 60 minute "eat whatever you want".

The benefits are that the body switches to burning predominantly fat for energy, thus overcoming carbohydrate addiction, energy slumps and fat deposition; muscle mass is retained through earting adequate protein, essential fats, and the carb loading meals; there is great variety to the menus, plus simple principles to creating your own meals; and adherance is greatly aided by the carb loading and cheat meals.

I've switched to this diet today, aiming to reach my goal of 156lbs and <10% body fat by 28th November.

If you would like to check out the diet for yourself visit www.jayrobb.com

12 Week Body Transformation Challenge

Six clients have now started the 12 Week Body Transformation Challenge - all want to lose body fat and build or retain some muscle.


The recording of diet has been made as simple as possible - it involves selecting one of three choices per meal (6 a day including snacks), entering the letter and the time eaten. So far compliance is perfect.


Three people are training with me in the FISH studio but the others have elected to train by themselves following programmes I have written. They all have copies of the diet plan and record sheets and unlimited email support.


Whilst it is naturally ideal to do the challenge with a trainer, not everyone can spare the cost; but its amazing what can be achieved with a good plan, access to support, clear goals, and (most of all) dogged consistency.


Good luck to everyone. 2nd November is not too far away. 12 weeks out of your whole life is nothing, so you might as well succeed.

If you have any queuries please don't hesitate to contact me on derekprior@yahoo.co.uk

To view FISH Personal Training services and products please visit http://www.derekprior.com/

If you would like to participate in the challenge either with a trainer or by yourself send me an email.

Derek

Training Offer

F.I.S.H. is going from strength to strength. We now have three popular Personal Trainers and a fourth will be starting in July. Most of our clients train twice a week, with some training up to four times a week. Everyone has their own progress folder detailing weight, measurements, goals, and records of every single workout,

If you want to lose weight, build muscle, improve fitness or just improve your health then we can help. At our fully equipped studio you will be able to train with full privacy - only you and your trainer will be in the studio during your session.

To book a FREE no obligations consultation email fishfitness@tiscali.co.uk. The first three people to respond will also receive one hour's FREE Personal Training session following the consultation.

Melody's Personal Training Maladies

I feel like giving up. I’m angry with people for letting me down tonight.
I am worried about money now, I had it all just about covered.

I am really stressed out about putting together that bloody piece of equipment, I nearly broke my back trying to do it, not to mention all the broken nails!

I didn’t have any food with me because I was going to go to Waitrose on the way to Ian’s and get some food.
Feel like eating one of Del's protein bars, given up chocolate for lent, but it’s not that that stops me it the thought of getting a telling off from Del!!

Perhaps a bag of crisps or, sod lent and get an inviting creamy chocolate bar (or 2), well after all I am hungry and I have a good thousand or more calories to eat by the end of the day!

My hands are cold and I’m sick of listening to that same CD, the floor is a mess, needs hovering, I need to do all the washing up, and there is a bloody trolley full of rubbish outside that I need to get rid of……..

Kathy has such kind words for me about my training, Anne is chuffed to bits she’s lost half a stone and 6% body fat. It’s great, but unless I get more honest and committed clients like them it is all going to fail. I feel despairing about this, I have to lose a stone at least before I think anyone will look at me and want to train with me and pay the full price. So why does my mind want to sabotage and go and eat crap just because my mood has been changed by circumstances that I cannot control right now?
Yes weight loss is going to be slow and steady, I weighed myself tonight and I was down another pound, felt depressed that is wasn’t down by 3 pound or more, OH GET A GRIP, WHAT DO I SAY TO EVERYONE ELSE? a pound down is better that a pound up, and a pound of fat takes up a good fistful of flesh!!

Well, found the high calorie Dr Kargs crackers, high in protein too so munched one of them for dinner, oh OK I lied I had 2. Well it was supposed to be my dinner.
Still pondering on the miserable mood, considering the blow it tonight attitude.
When I realise I need to challenge myself and decide to write it down get it all out, and get it into perspective.

Now how about I write a nice friendly, but informing letter to all my clients who are buggering me about.

Then drink a big glass of water (always makes me feel better some how)
Then tidy up, wash up, hoover up, so we’re ready for action tomorrow?

Make a plan of actions for the week as far as getting classes running and new clients in the door.

Then god forbids What about TRAINING?????? What on a moody day? Turn this crap day into the best day I have had??
I turned it around, all by myself. And from now on it will just get better and better. There’s still a lot of hard work and crap turn-able days ahead, but I am going to do it. I am going to get fit and feel great again and make a good decent living from a job I love doing.

the end. (until next time)

Why Some Clients Don't Lose Weight

Occasionally I have a client who trains regularly and makes good progress with resistance exercise and cardiovascular fitness. They may also be on carefully structured nutritional plans and yet when the time comes to check body composition there is a degree of disappointment. Sometimes there is an easy explanation: with one lady the weight did not drop significantly but the lean body mass had increased, indicating a growth of muscle and a drop in fat weight. Whilst she was disappointed by the apparent lack of weight loss, careful recording and explanation of the figures was reassuring and served as a future motivator.

Another client, however, failed to show any appreciable fat loss. In fact the fat percentage and over all body weight was higher - but so was the lean body weight. This client had made excellent progress with resistance training and his cardiovascular fitness had improved dramatically. It became apparent that something was amiss and so I became even more observant.

There may be any number of reasons for failure to lose fat weight - carbohydrate intolerance, under active thyroid, poor timing of nutrition etc - but generally the simplest explanation is the right one. Many clients who are overweight don't stick to the nutritional advice. They may indeed train hard and make progress - and they will still reap many health and fitness benefits - but if they don't make the suggested nutritional changes there will be little change in body composition.

It's not much of a problem if the client is on track nutritionally but occasionally slips up. As long as they don't skip meals and get back into the routine of regular eating the harm, if any, will be minimal. The problem is when the client professes to be following a nutritional programme but is actually gorging on ice cream, chips, cakes and fast food on a regular basis.

How is the trainer to react? Some clients will readily admit to the nutritional failings but nevertheless wish to continue with the training as a form of damage limitation. Others may become disillusioned with your training - in effect blaming you- and discontinue. Either way, the experience of a "non-compliant" client can be disheartening for the trainer - it may even adversely affect your reputation (the results your clients achieve is often the best form of advertising).

Do you just continue to train such an individual (is short-term financial reward enough to motivate you?) or does the issue need confronting?

I generally opt for an approach of gentle enquiry. It does not help the trainer or the client if an inquisition ensues. It is better to be patient, non-judgemental, and focused on the positives. It may be that the client experiences genuine difficulty making the nutritional changes; there may be hidden social pressures; they may have an eating disorder; some are fearful of succeeding; some become anxious as their body weight reduces.

The important thing is to communicate, to adopt an attitude of active listening, and to advise only where advice is sought. Suggested changes should be small and manageable, and enough time needs to pass for these changes to become habituated before further changes are made. Be specific. If your client drinks 3 litres of Coke a day suggest they switch to diet coke (or, better, water). If they are failing to drink enough water, ask them to introduce an extra glass or two and encourage them to bring a water bottle to training sessions.

Offer small amounts of education: talk about the virtues of high protein at one time, glycaemic index at another. Focus on the foods they currently eat that are helpful for their training goals. Don't label foods good and bad however.

With such clients, small changes may reap long term benefits. The key is to remain patient, to keep communicating, and never to condemn.

Diets Don't Work

Whilst the diet industry would like you to believe that you can shed weight by purchasing their products, it is unlikely that you will achieve any long-term benefits from the majority of diets and weight loss products on the market. Sustainable weight loss is best achieved by creating a negative energy balance – that is burn more calories than you consume.

The problem with traditional diets is that they often advocate eating fewer calories than those needed by the body to sustain its basic functions. If you consume fewer calories than this Basal Metabolic Rate the body will enter starvation mode and cling on to fat stores in an attempt to preserve life. If blood sugar levels drop as a result if inadequate nutrition, particularly for those on low carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins diet, the body will create its own glucose for energy by scavenging amino acids from lean muscle tissue. This self-cannibalisation results in less lean muscle which consequently reduces the metabolic rate. In effect this means fat gain will happen even easier in the future.

A reasonable approach to sustainable fat loss has a number of elements. Energy out has to be greater than energy in. Rather than reducing your calories to amounts lower than Basal Metabolic Rate, additional calories should be burnt through exercise (incidental exercise such as walking to work and taking the stairs, or using the cardiovascular equipment in a gym).

Metabolic rate can be raised by increasing lean muscle tissue through resistance training (each additional pound of lean muscle burns approximately fifty calories per day at rest). Weight training also burns between 240 and 400 calories for a typical session.

Nutritionally, a balanced diet comprised of approximately 55-60% carbohydrate, 30% fat and 10% protein is recommended for health. There will be some variations depending on desired outcomes and exercise programmes. Carbohydrates should be from wholegrain, wholemeal sources and of low-medium GI (glycaemic index). Avoid simple sugars as these will spike blood sugar levels causing insulin production which will store the sugars as fat.

A useful aid to ensuring you eat enough to lose weight is the keeping of a food diary in which you record times, amounts and types of food eaten. For optimal results a programme of exercise involving both cardiovascular and resistance training is recommended. The anatomical adaptations that take place through a progressive exercise programme increase the ability of the body to metabolise fat as fuel whilst raising the metabolic rate and burning additional calories.

Fat Loss Tips

Whilst it is a good idea to estimate your resting metabolic rate and then to make adjustments for activity and weight loss/gain goals it is possible to make good progress even if you don't go through with the calculations.

In the past I have calculated my clients' nutritional needs down to the last gram of each macronutrient. I've then produced detailed meal plans that ensure a balanced array of nutrients, timed with military precision. I used to present the client with the plan confident that they would follow it to the letter and make the gains they wanted.

Bitter experience has taught me that there are very few "ordinary" trainees who are going to be consistent with such plans. Their lives are too varied; the dietary rules are too strict and it is only a matter of time before they break them. Usually these infringements of the rules incur a "oh, well, might as well give up" response and the goal gets ever more remote.

There are exceptions, of course, and these people make the best gains.

Others get into the idea of writing down what they eat - only they do this retrospectively and then beat themselves up for consuming too little or too much.

Recently I've elected for a basic ("ideal") meal plan with a number of alternatives for each meal and some general principles for those "can't be bothered" times.

Basically, there is a simple structure: eat six times a day at roughly three hourly intervals. At the simplest, divide your target calories (which you can determine by keeping a food diary for five days and seeing what you need to maintain, or you can do the calculations). If your goal is to lose fat, reduce this figure by about 15%.

Divide your calories by six and aim to eat roughly this amount at each of the six meal times.

For those who are busy, protein bars or drinks will provide convenient alternatives, along with hard fruit.

The diet should remain high in protein (1.6g per kilo of lean body weight is recommended for fat loss. There's no benefit from going above 2g per kilo). Carbohydrates should come from wholegrain sources wherever possible and should be low GI, and fats should be principally monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

Once you decide on the sorts of foods you are going to eat, spend a bit of time calculating their macronutrient and caloric values by referring to the packet labels and using a calculator. It should then be possible to identify a variety of foods and snacks that could make up a meal slot.

You can work out the percentages of protein, fat and carbohydrate in accordance with your goals. For health the ratios are: protein 10%, carbohydrate 60%, fat 30%. For serious training, the retention of lean tissue and fat loss these percentages will need to be adjusted (for example 20, 55, 25). You may want to experiment with ratios or refer to a good nutrition book.

For simplicity, divide the values between the six meals (remember, there's little point consuming more than 25-30g of protein at one time - the excess will be excreted or stored as fat); and don't get hung up on carbohydrates: you need them! Your brain needs them, and your muscles needs them. Just make sure that they are from clean, fibrous sources and low GI, except within the fifteen minutes immediately after training when simple sugars help to speed recovery and optimise protein synthesis.

A sample basic structure might look like this:

7am Shreddies, skimmed/semi-skimmed milk; glass of orange juice

10am Protein bar; apple

1pm Tuna salad sandwich (wholemeal bread - preferably with seeds)

4pm Protein bar; pear

7pm Sweet Potato, Chicken breast/grilled fish/broccoli, carrots

10 pm Protein shake; handful of nuts

Post workout (within 15 minutes) 1-2 bananas; protein shake


That's about as basic as it gets. Once you have your structure in place you can add variety by substituting foods of similar nutritional value. Make sure there are enough good fats by adding cold pressed extra virgin olive oil to salads, eating a handful of nuts or seeds, and eating salmon once a week. The protein bars and shakes should be the low GI/low-moderate carbohydrate variety if your goal is to lose fat.

The more planning and calculating you do, the better the results, but as I said at the beginning, there are few people who can commit to that. Find out the sort of foods you should be eating; approximate their caloric value, and slot them into the six meals a day structure.

If you can't afford, or don't want, protein supplements, eat more fish, chicken /turkey breast, eggs, low fat yoghurts etc. You might also want to look at quinoa.

Once you know what you should be eating you can stock up on all the required foods and snacks and prepare food in advance for convenience/packed lunches.

One last thing: if you do "fall off your horse" and binge/eat too much when dining out, don't fret. Enjoy yourself and then resume your normal eating structure. Don't skip a meal or try to adjust for the additional calories. The basic meal plan should be the norm but there will (and must be) exceptions (unless you are a competitive figure/bodybuilding athlete or have a pathological relationship with food and body image).