I’ve now started drinking coconut water and also eating and using extra virgin coconut oil in my high temperature cooking but most of all on my face as a moisturiser.

Click the video below to watch!

“You have some weeks where things don’t go according to plan and it’s about finding the power to get back on track. Once you master that power you’ll be unstoppable because it’s not about being tough on yourself it’s about being clever about yourself…”

Over the years my body shape has gone up and down probably just like yourself. I have things going on in my life that cause stress, make me eat the things that I shouldn’t do, etc etc.

But if there’s one skill that I have adapted it’s the one to be able to put a bad day or a bad week behind me and get right back on track.

I think sometimes we find it so hard to stop the sabotage.

Yes it was one cake.

Yes, it might have been a jumbo packet of crisps.

Yes, you may have had a blow out at Mdcdonalds….

But that doesn’t mean tomorrow needs to be the same, just because you made a bad decision for your body. Learn to put a line across it start a fresh as quickly as possible. 

Sabotage normally stems from stress, so the quicker you can get to the heart of the stress, the less sabotage you will have. But again, it’s not so much about that, than it is about drawing a line, quicker rather than later. You will find this episode of ihealthpod incredibly useful if you’re currently stressed.

Let’s say you just ate a packet of donuts and got all of that guilt. Your normal cycle might be to that evening continue the ‘eat-crap-o-thon’ with a take-away. The following day is your new start, not a week later.

Too often I hear about these long, drawn out periods of sabotage. Start setting yourself a deadline to end it, as quickly as possible.

You know it’s as easy as making that decision.

I’d be interested in finding out how long your sabotage can be. Is it normally days, weeks or even longer?

Be sure to share this episode and put into practice everything he suggests for the best possible results and as the professor says, be sure to get your questions in below using the facebook comments… You may even get a mention in the next episode!

Often a crash diet has you doing something drastic like eating only one meal, one item or a liquid in a day. This of course is very different from the way you usually eat and the way the rest of your family may eat. This right away has limited how long you would be able to continue this diet as a new lifestyle. Sometime you will most likely go back to something more like the eating habits you started with. Even if you could keep with it though, there may be bigger problems than a return to your old way of eating.

Almost every crash diet lacks one very important thing: balance. This balance of vitamins, minerals and proteins provides the very building blocks needed to aid your body in building itself as old cells die off and keeping your systems running in top order. This imbalance is often caused by the low calorie count the diet is trying to achieve in order to cause the body to tap into it’s fat stores for help.

Problems that could arise from crash diets are weakness as you lose muscle when your protein levels plummet, losing hair, dry skin, unclear thinking, headache, irritation, depression and dizziness. This is due to the body literally starving for the building block elements it needs to restore your body daily. This may not be what you were trying to achieve- a thinner but unhealthy, you.

When these symptoms start up it is most likely because the rapid breakdown of fat has released dangerous levels of uric acid, cholesterol, triglycerides and keytones into your blood. These chemicals are leading causes of blood toxicity and will start inflammatory conditions as your body is unable to filter them out quickly enough. All of these problems  can also trash your immune system leaving you vulnerable to outside attack, that is if the inflammatory condition does not cause your body to begin attacking itself first.

One long term very undesirable effect of crash diets is that once you have shocked your metabolism it can be hard to get it to work properly in the future. This means that healthy weight loss methods are not going to have as good of an effect down the line. While crash diets can be used to achieve sudden weight loss- like many things in life, just because we can do it, does not mean we should.

If you want to start a diet that is a lifestyle plan then the Lunch Box Diet is a much healthier option for life!

As I sit writing this post, completely pooped, I’m three or so hours after finishing my first proper Crossfit session. Now you may be wondering what Crossfit is all about. Well, it’s different that your average fitness class.

As someone who has trained a lot of clients and motivated them to exercise, for once I was the one being pushed beyond my comfort zone and you know what, it felt great and I needed it.

I’d been putting this off for months, but really wanted to give it a go, so made the call on Monday, had my first introductory session on Tuesday and this evening (Thurs) was when I got my first proper hammering.

Instead of doing slow and steady work which I find more boring than watching Coronation Street, you’re working intensively, one exercise after the other with as little rest as you can until you complete all of the rounds. This is great because it forces you to stretch your lung capacity and gets your heart rate up nice and high while incorporating functional strength exercises that build muscle and yes, burn fat!

So today after going through some more exercises (the induction lasts for 4 weeks before you can start the normal classes), this was my WOD (workout of the day).

WOD

400meter run
15 box jumps (jump on and off a wooden box)
15 squat / ball throws (squat with a medicine ball, throw it up against a wall – 10kg)
x 3 rounds.

The idea is that you change the workout up each session but still make a note of the time it has taken you so that you can come back to it at a later date and see your improvements.

These workouts are short, intense, varied and fun and build strength, power, speed, endurance to name but a few of the benefits.

The great thing is, it REALLY pushes you to do your best and in terms of helping you lose weight, it’s definitely a fantastic way to strip down fat.

Crossfit classes run all around the world so chances are you can find one (just type into google ‘Crossfit [yourcitiy] ) close to you and even if you can’t, you’d be able to put together your own Crossfit style workout from the exercises and plans on the site. But if you can get to one, I’d recommend just booking yourself in.

I’ll let you know my progress. I’ll be using Lunch Box Diet and definately using ‘Active Carbs’ in my boxes for my crossfit session days.

It’s only been a couple of sessions now and I’m completely hooked.

Confidence comes in many ways and the more you can do to increase it the better you are going to feel. It’s not just about one thing. The more ways you can boost it and make the most of what you have, the better, right?

The Lunch Box Diet is one step of the equation, adding fitness into your routine is another, wearing clothes that make you feel good is another, so is being surrounded with the right people. The list goes on.

In fact, you won’t go far wrong by implementing this daily routine to boost your confidence. Each step builds on itself…

10 Daily Step Routine To Confidence

Step 1: Wake up earlier and swap your shower for a quick bath to make you more focused for the day ahead. Put on music or a motivational CD that will get you feeling great.

Step 2: Put on underwear that will make you feel good.

Step 3: Dress your best for the occasion. Put on some smellies.

Step 4: Start off your day by eating a healthy breakfast and pack your healthy lunch box for the day. We don’t want your energy to be low as this will increase your stress and decrease your confidence.

Step 5: Make it your mission to help out and bring a smile to at least one person. Helping others will make you feel good about youself too.

Step 6: Find the positive of everything you do, instead of seeing the negative.

Step 7: Listen or read at least one hour a day about something inspiring or positive, swapping gossip magazines for something that will boost your confidence.

Step 8: Exercise. Get moving, and you’ll generate feel good hormones which will help with your confidence.

Step 9: Eat a healthy evening meal.

Step 10: Wind down from a busy day preparing and setting in motion the next day. If we look back, we can see that planning and preperation is the major reason we can fall off track. Let the end of the day be the time you get ready to reapeat your success from the day you just had.

To to celebrate confidence in this way, what better way than to give you the chance to treat yourself to something great looking, FREE!

Since the last competition, which went down really well I wanted to find more competition prizes to help transform more lives. Now this prize may not instantly seem like it’s for the guys, but if you have a partner then what better way to surprise them. So I want you to enter if you’re a man reading this.

I’ve teamed up with the great people at MaxCleavage.com to give you the chance to win vouchers to spend at their online store.

They’re celebrating the launch of their new swimwear range that can be found at www.MaxCleavage.com.

The main thing to note about these boxes is that they’re not all eaten at once. When you do this, we fill ourselves up, which means we become sluggish and tired. By grazing throughout the day or eating ‘little and often’ we balance our blood sugar levels and lose fat. Additional benefits of these boxes are improved hair, skin and nails, health and energy. These boxes are great becuase most people make bad decisions based on hunger. When you always have your lunch box with you you’ll never need to wonder where your next meal is coming from!

These lunch box ideas should give you enough to go on, but if you want full recipes, an entire plan to follow as well as VIP support in the community then head to www.lunchboxdiet.co.uk to find out more, I’m always posting the full recipes in my VIP area! Click here to find out more.

Check out this Lunch Box Ideas Video (pics below)

With all of my lunch boxes, they have to follow four group (A, B, C, D) forumula which really ensures that you’re getting the correct combination of foods to accelerate fat burning. Once you make the swicth to grazing you’ll find it hard to turn back! In addition, these lunch box ideas are perfect for office workers, stay at home mums, busy executives, those who work on the move… If you can pack a lunch box (use a cool bag if you need to), then you really can transform your eating habits forever!

Lunch Box Ideas…

In this post I wanted to share with you the images which for me really do create an emotional responce in the body. When I see these images, they just seem to do something and when I’ve posted them on the facebook page, they’ve recieved the most amount of ‘likes’ and comments. This is wht the facebook page is so useful, remember it acts as a trigger. One minute you’re lacking in motivation and the next I’ll post a blog, say something or add something that will pick you up and get you right back in the frame of mind you should be. Well I hope so at least…

NEW: Just added video version of this motivational post

I really hope you enjoy these and share this with your friends. Remember, try put a smile on someone else’s face every day! Let me know in the comments which one is your favourite and why…

Click on an image to enlage – for daily motivational pictures like this on facebook go here and hit ‘like’

Maybe it’s time I grow my hair back?

Hmm.

Karl Pilkington & Jude Law report from the Vitality Show! lol (not our words)

From the second you’re inside, you get the instant impression it’s going to be a fun day. There are stands offering all sorts of treatments, foods, health testing and plenty more besides.

After walking around for about ten minutes, Justin spotted some water basins, pots of sticky stuff and was seduced towards the stand like a bee to honey…

While a lot of the stands are great for overall health, not all of them applied to The Lunch Box Diet, but this one did and Justin was really keen to get on camera and make a video…

http://www.kinetic4health.co.uk/

We met some really great people. The great thing about the Vitality Show is that it’s just filled with people who are trying to help others and that’s why it’s such a great place to hand out. I’m always talking about your ‘circle of influence’ and when you have thousands of people wanting around you who are obviously wanting to improve their lives, it just makes you feel good.

Since we were only up there for the day, we didn’t get a chance to listen to any of the speakers, but the show also offers free talks, where you can listen to experts chat about their topics and motivate others which is great!

Now I’m not exactly sure what this bear was promoting but Justin was really excited about having the chance to get an arm wrestle with him.

Lord Vs The Big Bad Bear = Who Won?

I’ll let you guess who won…

Quickly after we headed on towards the back of the exhibition hall only to find celebrity chef Ed Baines (Britain’s Best Dish) finishing up his cooking demonstration. So at the show, as well as being able to buy healthy grub, you can also learn from the masters at their game.

We had a chat for a little bit, told Ed about the Lunch Box Diet and he said he would be happy to put together his very own Lunch Box Diet combination, so watch this space – “Britain’s Best Lunch Box” here we come!

I'll let you know when Ed creates his own Lunch Box Diet box! Yey!

While the majority of the show is pretty healthy, you do find quite a few treats that would give you a complete sugar overload and since we’re still in the 30 Day Challenge, this was pretty tough to resist!

Resist, resist! I love those long sweets. Oh and check out my top hat! lol

If you’re currently using The Lunch Box Diet, you’ll know how important it is to use the dressing group of your box to really power up the flavour and we stumbled on this AMAZING stand which offers premium quality oils. It gets my taste buds exciting just talking about this one. These tasted amazing from just a small amount. In fact, I loved them so much I made a video…

After grabbing some food, making some more great contacts and soaking up more of the atmosphere, we wandered around and really got excited by a lot of the new products that are being made available.

Towards the end of the show we spotted a stand that offers more great dressing for your lunch box. Since most of them have taste testing, we dipped into to these and they’re great!

Have you been to the Vitality Show before? What about next year? Maybe we’ll meet you there. What looks most appealing and do you think that we look Jude Law or Karl Pilkinton? Your comments please…

Recently I was writing a previous post and I made a note to write this one.

So I was sat on the train again heading back from London and the conversation went a little bit like this…

Fun Exercise Train Chat…

Lady 1: “Yes, I’m doing these squats at the moment, they really make you work hard”.

Lady 2: “I need to start exercising, but I just don’t find it fun, for me it needs to be fun or I just won’t do it”.

Now there are two types of thought among trainers out there and I’m a little bit split on this one… One group of trainers say that exercise isn’t meant to be fun, but should instead simply get results, whatever it takes. They’re firm with their belief and use a strict protocol based on the need of the client, the result they want and the fastest way to achieve that result. I respect that.

Others feel that a fun element should be developed into every session. Of course, for some, any exercise even the slightest jog might be be classed as ‘the worst thing to do on earth’.

Personally, I use a programme based on my goals and build in exercises that I enjoy, but would certainly take part in other activities that were more fun based, just because I enjoyed them even if they weren’t moving me closer to my goal in the quickest time possible.

Let’s take Zumba for example (Dance based class). I would say that this is definately classed as a ‘fun’ type of exercise. It’s soooo popular and I have NOTHING against it, let’s make that clear. But let’s break it down to say 20 people that are in that ‘Zumba’ class.

Each of those 20 people has their own specific goal. One might be there to gain more energy, the other for their health, another purely for the social side, but the majority I would say would be there for weight loss and fat loss.

Now, I’m not saying that Zumba is not effective exercise by any stretch of the imagination. However, the results that let’s say ‘Sarah’ in that class wants could be quicker achieved with a more specific program to her, but it entirely depends on whether Sarah is even aware of this and would prefer an alternative or is more motivated by the ‘fun’ element. Finding out what really motivates Sarah is really, really important.

Sarah’s goal to get from A-B (if she has set a goal), could could be 3, 6, 9 months or never depending on what she’s actually doing during her training time.

For example, let’s look at 5 different ways that Sarah could get fit, healthy and lean (this list could have easily been 100+ strong and then some!) For arguments sake, her goal is fat loss. We now know she likes fun exercise, but the priority is to get to her goal as quickly as possibly, so she’s willing to fore-fit an element of the ‘fun’ for that result.

Now, just like comparing the amount of calories in a Mars Bar to the calories in bag of vegetables is silly, it would also be silly to think that each of these activities will bring the  the same result on the body for Sarah.

Simply by adding in healthy nutrition to her exercise which will COMPLIMENT her gym sessions, not take away from it, this will give her a boost in results.

It’s worth mentioning here that most nutrition programs DO NOT take into account whether you’re exercising or not, because they’ve not been developed by those in fitness. In Lunch Box Diet the ‘Active Carb’ portion (Group D), is important since it gives you that extra fuel you need for your workouts as well as the right nutrients to absorb protein from the other food groups. Click here to get started…

This is why it’s critical to ensure that you stick to the guidelines provided in the Lunch Box Diet system to make sure you’re getting everything you need for your exercise sessions.

Okay so back to ‘Sarah’.

So the question is, which one will bring the fastest results? Well, depending on the intensity she’s working out, the group of exercises she’s performing and her nutrition (LBD), the full body weights session would provide her with increased muscle, work her heart and lungs and make her stronger. This would be my choice to test, but I have had different results with different clients. There are quite a few other factors to consider. You may be working around injuries, different body types react to different things and so forth. The nutrition element is obviously massive which is where most fall short of results.

Back to the Zumba…

Again, I have nothing against Zumba on a beginner level, just as much as I don’t have anything against swimming, walking, or badminton – in fact I play badminton from time to time, don’t tend to swim and well everyone walks (but some people walk specifically for exercise and don’t step it up a gear and wonder why they don’t see results).

But I wouldn’t want ‘Sarah’ to do Zumba 3 x per week to help her get to her goal in the quickest time as possible. Why?

Well, there’s two things that are likely to happen. First of all she might not see the results as quick as she wants and lose motivation and then label all ‘exercise’ as something that ‘doesn’t work for her’ which is wrong, but also because what’s best for her body is to build muscle to burn fat and in the long term what this class will do is actually break down muscle just as would going on the x-trainer or bike for long periods of time….

The more time this is repeated, the more chance this person is going to develop a boredom, frustration and negative association to exercise.

Back to the topic of ‘fun’.

As an introduction to exercise I think it’s important to make activities fun. But what someone wants and what someone needs are two completely different things. Plus with so much crap talk of ‘I don’t have enough time’ when actually ‘if I cut out using facebook, watching trash TV’ is reality then surely it’s important to make the best use of our time when we do exercise.

Normally the truth of ‘I don’t have the time’ translates to ‘I don’t really want to do it’. And I know some of you may be shouting at this blog post saying that’s not true, and there are exceptions, but normally if I get a time diary from people, I can easily shift and move things around, you just need to think differently when you plan out your days.

The thing is, we’re all at a different point in our fat loss journey and as you move along it, you may start to enjoy the things that initially didn’t feel were fun. This comes when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

It’s up for you to decide what’s more important for you at the end of the day. You may opt for all out best results and forefit some of the fun (if you don’t find exercise fun at all). You may want to opt for just fun exercise, but know that it make take a bit longer to get to your goal. I will do a post in the future with fun exercise ideas too!

I’d love to get your thoughts on this. Do you think exercise should be fun and are you willing to fore-fit some of the time it will take to get to your goal in order to make it so, or do you just want the best results in the quickest time, whatever you have to do… It’s time for you to comment.

Remember, if you’re not currently using my Lunch Box Diet, you’re really missing out, especially if you’re exercising as it’s PERFECT to compliment your gym time. Plus you’ll get access to the VIP area where you get amazing support from the members who are using the plan. Click here to get started…