Shay PT

The 20%

I don’t want to bog you down with the diet conversation too much now. I’ve been blogging for over a year and a lot of my earlier content was about different diets, a calorie deficit and weight maintenance and seeing as the science on these subjects hasn’t changed in that time I don’t feel the need to repeat it. You can always look back in my posts to find the relevant reads for you.

But, especially at this time of year, I get lots of people asking me what the best diet is for a new year’s resolution or how to stick to a diet during the Christmas period.

Bearing in mind that I’m now living in a country where their bitoque dishes come with rice and excessive amounts of chips on the same plate (carbtastic!) and the best pastel de natas for a little sobremesa treat, I’m also keen to find that happy foodie head place where I can still meet weight maintenance goals and enjoy my meals.

Enter The 20%

I, like many others that I speak to, will say things like…

“I’ve quit smoking…

I’ve cut down on alcohol…

I’ve got kids/work/family/friends who depend on me and I get stressed…

I don’t need to train for a marathon/Olympics…

I just want to be fitter, healthier, stronger and happier.

Why can’t I just enjoy a freakin’ pizza if I want one?!!”

Well, here’s the thing. We can. We can have pizza, a burger, an extra Yorkshire pud on our Christmas dinner plate. But we need to stick to one rough bit of math. If we can consume 20% of the food and drink that are considered non-nutritional, then for the most of us we will be in a good weight maintenance place. And if the other 80% of the food is full of vitamins, proteins and nutrients, then there’s a good chance of weight reduction.

Let’s take the traditional Christmas lunch as an example. Turkey breast is a protein monster coming in at about 30g in a serving. And the vegetables…sprouts have a great fibre content with 8g per serving. Carrots promote bone health with high calcium and vitamin k content. Red cabbage reduces inflammation. Parsnips are full of vitamin C and can help regulate blood pressure.

Then there’s the potatoes. You can’t have a Christmas dinner without a few roasties. Rich in iron, they can improve digestion. So even if we add the pigs in blankets and Yorkshire pudding, we can safely say that we’re in the 80% zone for highly nutritious food. Leaving us with a good 20% to play with. Heck! We could even add a pate starter and a pudding as long as we keep to sensible portions.

But Christmas time is tricky for other reasons. The actual Christmas dinner is not the problem. The tub of celebrations, the nibbles and the Irish cream, now there’s the problem!

We can, however, still be indulgent. We can eat some chocolates and not the whole tub or have a few alcoholic drinks without drinking the bar dry.

Even on a day of celebration, we should still stick to 20% of non-nutritional drinks. Water, coffee, tea, juice, milk will all be your friend if you plan to have a drink to get tiddly and you’ll be grateful for the 80% of positive fluids by the next morning.

The Bottom Line

Whether it’s the festive period or not, every day you should be thinking about what positive, nutritional food you could have with your next meal. But omitting everything else that you might enjoy is often a counter productive practice, where you just end up resenting the process and being miserable. And sooner or later, you quit the process and start right back at the beginning…anxious with no idea where to turn.

Be mindful about the nutrition that you put into your body, but don’t cut out the other stuff entirely. Think 20%. That 20% might just keep you on track.

#Coimbra

I thought I would share with you my week so far. This includes a trip to Coimbra before celebrating my son’s birthday in Sertá.

It’s difficult at the moment to post as often as I did a few months ago, which I hate, but we have had a few things going on and Finlay and Jonas have been with us every step of the way! So I’m writing this on an evening as they’re tucked up in bed and I have a glass of Sagres to chill out with. So here’s the week so far…

Lou and I thought that a bus journey to Coimbra and an overnight stay would be a real treat for the boys as we have promised them that we would travel around Portugal as much as possible to discover the culture (and the shopping centres!)

We regretted not exploring Scarborough and its surroundings as much as we would have liked since moving there in 2018 and we don’t want to make the same mistake again. I blame COVID lockdowns for this, but in the past 12 months ‘Project Portugal’ had also become our focus.

The Rede Express coaches are a good way of getting around Portugal and Spain as it works out cheaper than driving the car due to fuel and tolls. I also don’t fancy the stress of the roads. I’m new to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road and I still need to keep reminding myself of which way the oncoming traffic is coming as I approach a junction. Sitting on a coach for an hour and fifteen minutes seemed like a good idea.

Our priority for Lou and I in Coimbra was to find birthday presents for Jonas and Christmas presents. It has a big shopping centre called The Forum. That’s where we headed first. It isn’t the most cultural of experiences that we would have preferred, but needs must. It’s basically a big White Rose Centre and as I say, we needed to find gifts.

Sertá, which is where we currently live and will be buying a house, is beautiful. But it is no ‘shop til you drop’ experience. We needed a big city. We needed glitz and glamour. We needed the bright lights and the buzz. We needed to join the hoards of shoppers looking for a Christmas bargain. We needed Primark.

We did, however, manage an evening at the Coimbra Christmas market. Something that is difficult to comprehend for us is the warm air even during the evening. As we walked around the stalls with our light jumpers or t-shirts, we noticed the locals in their bubble jackets and wooly hats. I mentioned a few times to Lou that it was ‘muggy’ as I patted my sweaty head down, trying not to look too touristy. I failed.

Coimbra was a hoot. We did enjoy dipping our toes into a bigger city. We also liked getting back to Sertá.

So then it was Jonas’ tenth birthday on Wednesday. We were worried that we wouldn’t be able to achieve a ‘special’ day for him as, for the first time on his birthday, he wouldn’t be around his friends in the UK. And, despite our trip to the shops in Coimbra, it was still difficult to do a great gift shop seeing as he was with us. However, a bit of planning months ago back in the UK meant that we had already purchased some gifts for him.

We also went for pizza at his favourite pizza restaurant, R&R, and had cake back at the apartment. Despite everything being a bit different, I think he really enjoyed his day.

There’s been some serious stuff to overcome this week too. Time was running out in getting them a start date for school in January. Lou and I have been getting a little nervous about this as the paperwork and communication between their previous school, North Yorkshire council, the Portuguese authorities and their new school hasn’t been easy. Everything must be translated and, along the way, bits of important information have been getting lost in translation.

But yesterday we received good news. Jonas and Finlay will be starting their new school, Escola Basica Padre Antonio Louranço Farinha, on the 3rd of January. The boys took the news very well. I really hope that, come the day, they are still happy to be going.

They have been constantly with us now for 7 weeks, 9 by the new year, they are in a different country with a new language to learn. I remember going back to school after a holiday. Even worse, starting a new school. I’d feel sick to my stomach the night before. My boys will have to be much braver than I ever was.

But this was always meant to be a part of our journey. To put us in new, challenging situations. To learn and grow as people. The 3rd of January will be yet another challenge for our kids. And it’s a biggy.

So, there we go! I think I’m up to date with this eventful week. Keep checking in for my updates leading up to Christmas!

And She Stopped…

I often find the answers in the most unlikely of places. Well, unlikely to some. But for me, standing by the sea and observing the waves gently ebb in and out or in a forest as the dappled sun light dances through the branches, that’s when I am thinking clearly. Perhaps you have a favourite place where you feel inspired and where you can figure out a little puzzle that’s been on your mind.

Poet Becky Hemsley wrote…

“And she stopped…and she heard what the trees said to her. And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave. For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.”

As I gaze at the stars on an evening, miles away from traffic and humans other than my sleeping family, the silence is deafening. It is so profound that it takes on its own quality. A quality that is very difficult to convey.

So I just breathe. In that moment, I don’t need to do anything else.

My work includes instructing people on how to breathe. A strange job, right? After all, we breathe from birth. How can I teach that? Not that I have ever thought of it like that until now. As a fitness instructor, I need to teach a breathing pattern for a client to be able to perform an exercise correctly. This can take weeks or months to perfect. Even then, the professionals still need a reminder now and again.

And in a meditation therapy session the breathing techniques can be the most important aspect. It’s how we tune in and connect with our body.

But taking a moment to realise your breathing isn’t exclusive to these activities. Just five minutes in a quiet environment can help, but finding your favourite place, your ‘happy place’ and spending quality time there can be a game changer. Sometimes, you don’t even need to be there in person.

Have a think about where your favourite places are. Imagine being there now. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and put yourself there.

Sometimes you just need to stop and listen to the trees.

Confessions Of A Tooth Fairy

Finlay’s tooth has been threatening to fall out for months. He has wobbled it, pulled it and tugged on it but the little blighter has held on by a thread.

Until yesterday.

His front tooth finally fell out. No fuss, no blood. Just popped out.

‘So!’ announced Finlay, ‘I’ll be getting a Euro from the Tooth Fairy tonight!’

He is right, of course, that the tooth fairy does indeed visit our home on tooth-coming-out occasions but here’s what you should know about the tooth fairy that has been allocated to us.

Finlay is adamant that the Tooth Fairy is a ‘he’, so for the sake of this article and in danger of misgendering our Tooth Fairy, I’ll refer to him as male.

But this is where the issue may stem from. He might be upset that we call him a ‘him’. You see, the Tooth Fairy didn’t turn up through the night. No euro was left and Finlay’s milky white was still there, under his pillow, all wrapped up in a bit of tissue.

So Lou and I have spent the morning making excuses for our Tooth Fairy. We told Finlay that, perhaps due to us having a few different addresses in the past few months, he wasn’t sure where we lived.

We waited a moment to see Finlay’s reaction as we tried to defend our erratic Fairy friend from Toothland.

I’m not sure that was believable.

I went on to explain that, due to the backlog of tooth fallings out recently he might be running late. I used my birthday card as an example. I was due my card from my dad on the 14th of November from England. It is now the 2nd of December and it still hasn’t arrived.

But likening the Tooth Fairy to the lackadaisical postal system in central Portugal didn’t seem to wash with young Finlay.

Ok, Here’s The Truth

The truth is that the Tooth Fairy is a very hard, honest working Fairy who was well aware of Finlay’s tooth under his pillow but had fallen asleep that evening after a few glasses of port watching Netflix.

The Tooth Fairy, in waking up a little disoriented on the sofa, totally forgot to take the tooth and leave a Euro.

It was a total black mark on an otherwise glittering CV, but the Tooth Fairy had fucked up this time.

Still, I attempted to defend him. I told Finlay that the Tooth Fairy had a much tougher job than Santa. Santa has loads of elves to make presents and then Santa does his job on one night and takes all the credit!

I mean, there’s actually some credibility in my argument, right?

Tonight, I’m sure, the Tooth Fairy will have had a sobering talking to with his conscience and will totally be on it tonight. Finlay, however, is unaware of the damning truth that the Tooth Fairy got carried away with a bottle of Port and forgot to put a Euro under his pillow last night.

So we have given Finlay a little tip. We told him that the Tooth Fairy might like a note of appreciation, asking for his tooth to be taken, and this is what he might be waiting for. Just a little letter of thanks for the job he does. After all, the Tooth Fairy might also be a parent who is trying to do their very best.

I don’t think that the Tooth Fairy will let us down tonight.

Heroes

As a child I would watch my sporting heroes who would inspire me and enable me to dream of one day following them in their achievements.

Just to name a few, sportspeople like Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, Jimmy ‘The Whirlwind’ White and Andre Agassi excited me as they performed in their professional sport. They excited me because, although they were never considered the very best, they had an abundance of character to compete with those who were. A part of their edge is perhaps also down to the fact that they have each had their own mental health struggles.

And it appeared to me as I watched a recent Netflix documentary about Robbie Williams that most of the ‘famous’ people that I like or admire have mental health problems.

For some reason I’ve always followed William’s career. I don’t even like his type of music. But I could see, from afar, that he was desperately unhappy. The cheeky chappy who always wanted to play the clown and say something controversial, act differently and seem to go out of his way to be disliked. That was me as a teenager and young man. And seeing as we’re of similar age, he connected with me.

Similarly with Gazza. As a young footballer I wanted to be him. I watched World Cup Italia ’90 as a 12 year old in absolute awe of what Gazza could do with a football. I’m sure many kids did. He played for Spurs, I supported Liverpool and my mates supported Manchester United or Leeds. But it didn’t matter. That summer, we all had Gazza T-shirts on under our England shell suits.

None of my idols admitted to any sort of mental health issues, though. Yes, there had been drugs and alcohol issues, getting into trouble with the law and well documented domestic issues, but they never actually came out and said ‘I am depressed’ or ‘I need help’. Certainly not publicly.

This week, England and Saracens rugby captain Owen Farrell has made a statement saying that ‘in order to prioritise his and his family’s wellbeing’, he will be taking a break from International duties. This coming from a man who has lived and breathed the sport in an extremely masculine environment is highly commendable. Yes, winning World Cups and Six Nations trophies are important. They train incredibly hard for that moment. But it is not as important as an individual or their family’s mental health. Being an elite athlete is about recognising that. He did and he has acted on it.

Another of my idols, albeit a bit before my time, is Bill Shankly. He once said, “Some people believe that football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that. I can assure you it is much more important than that.”

With the world that we live in I am sure many people will qualify in justifiably being able to disagree with him. Sport is sport. Life is life. However, as a coach myself I can understand exactly what he means. During a training session of mine or a client’s, I expect that to be the only thing that matters in that moment. Whatever is going on outside of the gym must be parked there. That is how we achieve fitness results and how elite sportspeople achieve medals and trophies. But inevitably we have a life away from that, even the professionals who are making a living from their sport. They have families. They have feelings. They are fallible. No matter what their earnings are, where they live or what car they drive, mental health does not care. It can take a hold of anybody.

Perhaps mental health is, at last, being talked about much more openly than it used to be. I knew, even as a kid, that these sportspeople that I idolised were different from their counterparts. Their behaviours didn’t always fit the acceptable requirements of their team, professional body that they represented or the media. But did they even know that they had mental health concerns? Even if they did, what options did they have?

The UK in the 80’s and 90’s was a very different place to be an upcoming sports superstar to what it is now. For the likes of Gazza, he had to perform in front of terraces known for chanting fans abusing the footballers for anything they could. Any sort of ‘weakness’ or admittance to needing help would have been disastrous for him and his career. And this baying mob mentality was led by the written press at the time. They loved his antics, but I often wondered if they were laughing with him or at him.

In my opinion, social media has nothing on the British tabloids of the 90’s. Social media has, for every bad, a cause for good too. The tabloids, however, could ruin you in an instant if you didn’t stick to its narrative. It’s hard to imagine a rugby player talking about mental health back then. So, though saddening to hear that Owen Farrell feels that he needs to step down from his England duties, it is encouraging to know that he can without being abused for it. At least from the majority of us decent folk.

Heroes aren’t just the ones who lift the trophy at the end of a game.

The Brick Wall

For those of you who read my blogs from afar you might not see my family’s move to Portugal as anything too big. But for those who have followed my journey and who know me personally will know that it is absolutely massive.

The fact is that my decision to move from the UK to Portugal came from me (or my wife and I) hitting a brick wall.

This brick wall was making us unhappy. We felt that, month upon month, we could not pay mortgage bills, rent bills on our businesses, council tax and food and energy bills. There was no way of planning a holiday for the kids. Our savings since COVID was depleted. Our brick wall was getting thicker and higher.

You too might feel that you have a brick wall. Let me tell you now that you can climb it, dig under it, hell you can kick your way through it, but never let a brick wall break you. You can come through the other side.

Your brick wall might be totally different to mine, but if it is making you unhappy and restricting your happiness then it is there.

I always had a need to travel, yet career moves and kids meant that I had to stabilise my life at that time. It was only in 2016, after the referendum for the UK to leave the EU did I know that I would leave my home. But at the time my career was just taking off as a Personal Trainer and my kids were babies. It was, we felt, not the right time.

And as much as I always threatened to leave the UK it only became a reality when I felt that I could no longer afford to live there. I hit the brick wall. And to put that into perspective, my mortgage had doubled in the UK from October and council tax was almost £300 a year. In Portugal, we are mortgage free and council tax is 20€ a year. A 5 litre box of quaffable wine is under 5€ too. Bonus.

I’m not here saying, hey, look at me! Look at how well we’re doing! Blimey. There’s a long way to go for us yet. We’re still renting from one place to the next until our house purchase goes through. We’ve been living like this since September and expect to be until late January as we still await a reply from a school for our kids.

Also, there is a whole lot of work to do on the property that we have bought to become liveable and profitable for our business. Something that you will be able to see on our Road To Tranquility Facebook and YouTube pages plus Channel 4’s A New Life In The Sun in series 10.

The Brick wall is still palpable. But we still keep climbing, digging, bulldozing and beating down this bloody wall. It won’t get in our way.

Never let a brick wall get in your way. Whatever you want, overcome it and reach the other side. Don’t let it beat you.

The Sea Needs To be Sailed

As I was finishing my workout yesterday I reflected back on what I had achieved during the session. Using unconventional methods, breeze blocks, trees and bottles filled with sand I recognized that, despite not having the equipment I was used to, I had a damn good workout. Was it perfect? No. Was it effective? Yes.

Bob Marley, when asked about perfection, said it best. “The moon is not perfect. It is full of craters. The Sea is incredibly beautiful but salty and dark in depth. The sky is always infinite but often cloudy. Not everything that is beautiful has to be perfect.”

The Sea needs to be sailed, swam and viewed to be appreciated and admired. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Far too often as I watch fitness influencers I see a common theme. They aim to teach us the perfect form and the perfect diet. I also see many of them mock those who have poor gym form and much of their content becomes just a dig at their competitors or some poor random bloke performing lat raises.

Sure, poor form can lead to injuries, so practicing each day is very useful. But condemning those who don’t fall into the ‘gym bunny’ category with the perfect form with the perfect kit is not helpful.

I’m not a fitness influencer, but as a trainer who represents the industry I see my job as encouraging people to give it a go and discover activities that will help their health and fitness goals.

You don’t have to be the perfect runner, have the greatest knowledge or form in the gym, be the best swimmer or be able to walk for miles. You do, though, have to be open to trying out these things that make you move to find out what it is that you actually like to do.

There is no one method to get you healthier, fitter, stronger, faster etc (whatever your goal might be) apart from the method that you enjoy. The perfect routine doesn’t exist. The perfect gym form doesn’t even exist. There’s only a simple set of rules that can keep us safe from injury.

Stop looking for perfection and just find what you enjoy and work with it. It might not be right for the next person as long as it is right for you.

And now, in my moment, I think I’ve found what is right for me.

Here is my ‘gym’ that is working for my mental and physical health at the moment…

A wooden bench, a bar and two breeze blocks

A bar lodged between two branches for pull ups

A rickety old work stool to sit on for seated shoulder press

The weight rack AKA the detergent bottles filled with sand

Eat The Frog First To Overcome Daily Lethargy

Eating the frog first is a phrase I heard some years ago to describe how training, doing an exercise class or a long walk/jog first thing in the morning can enable you to develop a healthy daily routine.

This saying, I believe, was made by Mark Twain to prioritize difficult tasks. He went on to say that if there are two frogs, eat the biggest one first.

It certainly helped me. I preferred a morning workout. It helped me complete other daily tasks throughout the day as I felt more motivated, more confident in my skin and it made me make better meal choices for that day.

And I am finding that this rule can assist in creating a productive routine for my kids at the moment. As those familiar with my blogs will know, my wife and I are currently buying a home in Portugal. Our boys haven’t yet got a school so we are homeschooling them. As each minute of the day passes we find that we are losing their interest to open up a text book as the lure of the pool, football in the garden and iPads take over.

And they are important too, of course, but as parents it is also our duty to keep up with their learning, especially as learning Portuguese is at the core of it.

But it isn’t just them who lets the day slip away without any schooling. If my wife and I don’t hit the ground running in the morning it is very easy to fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to consider this moment to be a vacation. There are many things that keep reminding us that it is not, however, such as ongoing contract negotiations between us and the house vendors and the unfinished business we are tying up in the UK. But these are yet more reasons to postpone the schoolwork.

Simply put, if we are to proceed with a healthy, stress free day we need to get all of the crappy stuff done early. We need to eat the frog first so that we can enjoy the yummy tasty things on the plate without worry.

Bored Of The Flies

We haven’t spent many days indoors whilst we have been in Portugal. Since arriving in central Portugal 3 weeks ago the temperature has been a seductive 21° and the evening sky with it’s stars and the milky way has been far more interesting than Question Time.

But with the warmth comes the flies. Loads of flies. Bluebottle, midge, hover, drone, bristle and my nemesis, the mosquito.

The typical fly in the UK (I’ll call it the ‘house fly’) is like a fly on steroids here in Portugal. And it brings all of its mates to land on me at any opportunity to feed, crap and groom on my skin. Performing a bench press has a whole new difficulty. Controlling 100k of steel and breeze blocks above my head with flies crawling on my face was a test. More attractive to them was I, seemingly, by my salty, sweaty, warm chassis.

But still, these little blighters I can cope with. What the real problem is, however, are the mozzies. They love eating me. Through the night, as I slide a warm foot outside of the duvet, they feast on me. My head, always exposed, is a full English breakfast for them.

And once these bites settle, they itch and sting to the point where I want to scratch at my skin. I can refrain from this throughout the day, but when I’m half asleep I wake up finding myself scratching at the bites.

This is, of course, a small price to pay. We’re in the countryside of Portugal. We did enough research back in England to know that this was always going to happen. Especially as I only needed to watch Carry On Abroad and the mosquitoes would find me.

Our latest trip to the supermarket had made us equipped with repellent sprays, wrist bands, nets and incense sticks. We are getting prepared. And it sounds like we need to be. After all, this is winter. By the summertime I need to be fully tooled up for them!

The Next Right Thing

Navigating our way through life is a complicated one. We do our best. Blimey, we try. But sometimes the anxiety of our past and what is in store for our future can be a constant buzzing around our head.

With it all swirling about, we miss our nearest targets. And they’re the most important ones. In resistance training terms, I use the ‘cycle’ of training programming to reach certain goals. I’ll explain…

We might have an ultimate fitness goal of losing 60 pounds in a year. This is called a macrocycle. Macrocycles are long term goals. Athletes, especially Olympians, can even have a macrocycle target set for 4 years time which is where they are expecting to be at their peak fitness for their main event.

But having this target of losing 60 pounds within a year is not enough. That is why, in the fitness industry, we implement mesocycles. This represents the different phases of training throughout a program and could depend on seasonal adjustments for example. Again, athletes will train for strength or endurance leading up to certain events depending on what is required of them to achieve winning a meet.

But we need to break it down even further. So we use microcycles. If we go back to the 60 pound weight loss in a year goal, a microcycle can be a weekly gym plan with a calorie or nutrition target. It can even be shorter than that. It can be a daily target. Shorter still? Every meal could be calorie controlled and every gym set can be weight and rep monitored.

Very often when I speak to weight loss clients, they have a very clear idea of their macro target (“I want to lose 60 pounds by this time next year”). Their mesocycle targets are usually a little less clear but can be managed (“I want to fit into this *insert item of clothing* by the summer”).

But their microcycle almost becomes none existent. And in 90% of my client base over the past ten years, I have found that it is the microcycle that is the most important bit for them and where the role of the PT has become essential. It has been their next gym visit or daily meal plan.

You see, some people might be able to book their place for next year’s Tough Mudder and break their training time down into cycles. For the rest of us, we need to just do the next right thing.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung once received a letter simply asking him ‘how to live’. Jung admitted in his reply that this was an almost impossible question to answer, but he did attempt an explanation. He said…

“If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure footedly along the path prescribed by your subconscious. Then it is naturally no point at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing.”

My interpretation of this is about doing ‘the next right thing’. This could be going for a walk, booking an exercise class, preparing a nutritious meal, calling on a relative you haven’t spoken to for a while or meeting up for a coffee with a friend. The next right thing is YOUR thing, nobody else’s.

I heard the quote ‘doing the next right thing’ on the soap opera Coranation Street the other day. Having studied Jung many years ago I recalled his reply after hearing the quote on TV.

In the soap opera, the character asked her friend how she coped with the tragic death of her young son. Her friend said that she didn’t cope and never will, but each day is just about doing the next right thing.

We all live with some sort of grief, regret, anxiety or doubt. But if you can manage the next right thing in your life then it is a step closer to some sort of comfort. It can, in many cases, lead to not just a strategy of coping, but to enlightenment and happiness.

Think now about your next right step. What are you going to do?