Never Give Up PT

The Balanced Plate

Calorie counting apps are useful to see how many calories you consume each day. But none of them…

Have a qualified PT inputting your data to ensure that you are not going too restrictive with your daily calories
Provide information on alternatives to your current diet
Create workouts in your very own exercise library on your app specific to your goals
Enable you to talk through your difficult days and have a live conversation with your PT (which happens to be me!)

I have created this challenge because I am my everyday client. I want to feel better and fit into my clothes but I also like cheese and biscuits on an evening washed down with a glass of wine. I work hard and want to indulge sometimes. And this is where I can help. I can prove that we can still enjoy the food we enjoy without guilt. I can show you how to balance the necessary nutrients alongside the other foods too. Nothing is banned, not if WE take control.

Not only am I professionally qualified to help my trainees, but I live through the same anxieties as them. My takeaway habits have been out of control. I’ve had moments where I’ve gone through two, three, four packets of crisps on an evening. I created habits of eating chocolate every night after my main meal and I’ve had times where I haven’t given myself any days off of drinking alcohol for weeks. I became a personal trainer because I felt that I could connect with people like myself. I knew that if I could do that, armed with the knowledge of how to fix it, then I could help others.

Guilt around our food is the biggest obstacle. If you eat the high calorie food that takes you over your daily calories then I say,”I hope that you enjoyed it! Own it, you ate it. Now move on.” No guilt needed. We just try and get your next meal back on track.

I will probably have to check my takeaway, crisps, chocolate and alcohol intake again in the future. I have goals. I am confident at staying on track. But I’m human. I slip into old habits and when I do I’ll deal with it in the way that I know how. I don’t look for perfection from myself or my trainees. I look for effort and honesty.

The Balanced Plate Challenge has, by far, been my greatest online training success to date. The results have been amazing. But like anything that’s worth doing it isn’t always easy and the path is not linea. The challenge doesn’t stop there which is why I’ll continue to develope The Balanced Plate beyond its 4 week challenge. And like every challenge that I set for my trainees, whatever they achieve, this is just the beginning. Imagine what they can do moving forwards.

The Feather In The Drawer

I walked up to my 8 year old son’s wardrobe with dread. I knew, as soon as I opened the double doors just very slightly a heap of clothes, football shirts, teddies and toys would spill out. As much as we ask him to tidy his bedroom we know that anything on the floor will get thrown into the wardrobe if he can’t find a home for it. We also tackle the cupboard often too. For some reason I’m the nominated football shirt sorter. My wife is the school uniform organizer. There are so many different football shirts so I feel like I’ve got the raw deal here . I put them in their correct place either folded for footy practice the next day by his bed, in his wardrobe or in his younger brothers drawer if they are small shirts. And if they have the shirts to match then the same procedure has to happen for them. The socks too.

But I can’t put all of the blame on our son’s lack of tidying up skills. Also inside of this wardrobe is loads of old clothes that no longer fit the boys. The tractor t-shirt that they both wore as babies, mittens, dungarees, shorts from their first summer holidays, coats from a few winters ago. I remember their first ever snowman that they built in those. I think that this wardrobe would be much more organized if mum and dad could just let go.

We’ve got so much better at not hoarding so much stuff. We’re both sentimental so selling or throwing our kids clothes can be tough but we do have periods in the year where we have clear outs. Certain coats, mittens and dungarees always remain though. They have special memories that we just can’t let go it seems. A tatty old Baby Jake book will always be remembered for the late nights getting our eldest to sleep as a baby. I knew the book by heart. How could we throw that?!

Funnily enough I’m not sentimental about the big, life changing stuff. I’m from Leeds and I moved away about 14 years ago. Apart from fleeting visits to see family occasionally I have no desire to go back. I have not once considered going back to the Corn Exchange for old times sake or standing at the steps of College of Technology all teary eyed. Stepping back in time seems daunting. But for some reason, the feather that my son picked up when he was one and a half remains at the bottom of the takeaway drawer in the kitchen. My mind pictures the moment every time I see it.

I have always wanted to reinvent myself in some way. Standing still or looking back doesn’t sit well with me. If I’m not happy with something I move on. I won’t dwell on the things that make me anxious. I didn’t like my birth name so I changed it. I don’t like where I live or work then I change it. And for the ultimate challenge if I don’t like my body, I change it. Selling up and moving on has come easily to my wife and I. In our 15 years together Scarborough has become our 5th town or city and we’re living in our 6th house. And that’s not necessarily because we disliked where we lived but because we found a new challenge elsewhere.

I have gone from a senior in a day center, restaurant manager, confectionery business owner, market stall holder, support worker, Personal Trainer and now Online Coach in the time that my wife and I have known each other and I know that she has played a huge part in those successes. She has her own success story. As for the failures we take them on the chin and move on.

I proposed to my wife in the Boboli Gardens in Florence. During that trip we created a travel journal and collected receipts, napkins and photos to put in it. Of course, we still have that. Looking back through that feels like a life time ago. I felt young and free spirited. Now, I often feel old with the occasional glimmer of free spirit! But that glimmer comes from my job as a husband, a dad and to my work and while I have those then that glimmer will always be there.

And if it’s an old tractor T-shirt in the wardrobe or a feather in the takeaway drawer that has to remind me, then they are worth keeping.

The 20 Minute Workout Challenge

The recent successes of my clients taking on the 20MWC has prompted me to keep the programme open. I often develop new challenges which I will announce in due course but the 20MWC is a keeper due to its high demand and the feedback I have received.

The beauty of this challenge is that it solves the issues of some of the biggest concerns for those wanting to begin a fitness journey. Time is the number one concern for most people and it holds them back at beginning an exercise routine in the first place. And then there’s the issue of where to exercise. I have worked with many people who chose to exercise without a gym membership and I think that we all discovered alternatives during gym closures in the past two years. You can exercise anywhere… especially for just 20 minutes a day.

But it’s not just about staying active. Build into the 20MWC is the calories and macro calculator for a trainee to keep on track of their nutrition targets. And the best bit is that I never ban any food. Those who have read my views already will know that I believe that banning foods can be counterproductive. By the end of week 4, my trainees have completed 400 minutes of exercise in their chosen environment and have been able to balance their calorie and macro intake without ommiting any food types with fantastic results.

Indeed, it has become such a huge success that some trainees who have completed this challenge want to take it up again. Of course, I raise the bar for round two!

If you would like to begin this challenge or enquire about any of my other online PT work that might be of interest to you email me at shay.pt@hotmail.com.

The Car Park Walk

In the previous gym that I trained in the car park was huge. The gym was attached to a busy shopping centre and, despite its high demands, the car park was never even half full. The gym I train in now shares its car park with the college, university and the Town’s football club stadium. It is massive. Not everyone’s gym has such luxury, admittedly, but if you are a member of a nationwide gym then I would imagine that it is a part of a shopping or leisure complex with ample car parking.

It is striking how many people I observe parking as close as possible to the gym entrance (even the naughty tinkers parking in a disabled spot without a badge in an attempt to get even closer) and then proceed to warm up on a treadmill.

I might have mentioned in a previous blog that I find treadmills excessive in these nationwide gyms. Simply put, I think that they take up too much room. These gyms are lucky to have two squat racks whilst rows upon rows of treadmills take up centre stage. Gyms do this for two reasons…

1. They are appealing to a mass market where consumers still believe that running on a treadmill burns more calories than resistance training.

2. Their PT’s don’t need to have a variety of knowledge standing next to someone on a treadmill. Teaching someone how to squat needs strength and conditioning experience. Cheering someone along on a treadmill is as good as getting the pom poms out. Teaching movement is a skill.

Machines and cardio equipment are easy and comfortable enough for the gym goers and the gym staff to work around and it sells memberships and cheap PT. A brand new gym member with little experience will always make a beeline for the tready first. It’s a comfort zone. Also, treadmills tell you how many calories a user has burnt during their time on it whereas a round of German Volume Training doesn’t. But guess which comes out on top?

Yet nothing can tell us how many calories we have burnt in any given activity. There are rough guides which is what we read from a tready, but unless your £40 a month gym has invested in the same high tech equipment as at Harvard Sports Science then we, the general public, are left with an estimate based on how fast you set the treadmill for.

Walking and running, however, are fantastic exercises which is why the treadmill has its uses, they just don’t need to breed so heavily in a mainstream gym. Yet walking and running can be done anywhere, even on the spot at home, in the office and the best of all in the great outdoors! Walking and running can be incorporated into a kick ass fat loss routine that gets results. That is proven. So what’s so bad about the carpark walk? Surely it can save you time in the long run.

If you have one hour to train, getting your heart rate up and your blood pumping with a swift walk across a car park is ample enough. Your cool down, too, can be the walk back to your car. This gives you more time to focus on more reps, sets and activities with everything else in the gym rather than warm ups and cool downs eating up your precious time.

If my trainee is performing deadlifts, then I will ask them to do a couple of warm up sets at deadlifts. I see no evidence to suggest that being on a treadmill will warm them up any better or as efficiently as the movement that they are about to perform. Likewise, if they are training for a marathon I wouldn’t warm them up with deadlifts prior to their run. Soccer players kick and run before kick off. Tennis players rally with each other. A boxer will shadow box in the locker room, not perform the Riverdance before their bout. It needs to remain relevant to your goals.

So let’s stop wasting time, use your training time wisely and, if you really want to get your steps in, do the car park walk.

Do You Know What Your Problem Is?

Your fitness journey is a problem. Make it your problem.

Ok. So before you criticize me for being all Negative Nancy on you, let me explain.

This problem is not a bad problem. If you think of a mathematical equation, a riddle, a puzzle or a science experiment, these are all set to challenge us but are also something to solve.

To solve this problem there are no time limits.

I was asked today ‘At what point will you be satisfied with your fitness achievements?’

I think I answered probably by 70 years old, but that’s incorrect. To a certain degree I’ll never be completely satisfied. I want to keep on learning, developing, defying the ageing process and become stronger. To do this, my fitness journey needs to be my problem that I can succeed with, fail with, become really pissed off with, cry and laugh with.

Some logical decisions have been made to help me continue succeeding, but there are the ones that must be avoided and that is comparing myself to others. It doesn’t matter what Big Dave from sales is deadlifting. He’s a good 20 years younger than me, genetically blessed with quads of steel and is performing in the next Pro-Am bodybuilding contest. That’s HIS problem. I’ve got my own.

The only young whippersnapper I’m comparing myself to is my 30 year old self. I want to be ahead of him. If, as I get older, I’m still ahead of him then I’ll be a bit closer to cracking the code. One thing that I know now that my 30 year old self doesn’t is that once you crack a code, there’s a whole new challenge to engage with. The problems stack up. There’s a bigger puzzle at the other side of the door. He doesn’t know that and it immediately puts me at an advantage, despite my age, because I’m prepared for it.

My health is important to me, but maybe not in the same way as you might think. I won’t live my life just to stay alive. But I will live my life to enjoy it way into my later years. It is rare that I see an elderly person and think ‘I want to be like that when I’m their age’. Instead they give me more reason to get my ass to the gym. I don’t want to struggle when I walk or run. I don’t want to have weight issues that cause breathing difficulties and bad knees.

And, unashamedly, I want to look the best too. I want to be confident in my clothes. I don’t just want to be strong I want to look strong. Be it at 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 years old. After that I might quit my gym membership and just watch Loose Women all day. I’ll decide on that if and when the problem arises.

What I can’t do, then, if I aim to achieve all of this, is give up on my problems. What’s the alternative to giving up on the gym? If I aren’t happy with my progression in my fitness goals then I’m certainly not going to be happy if I sack it off. The answer lies with the willingness to solve the problem and persist.

My favourite Einstein quote says,’It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer’.

To really begin to solve problems we must really dig deep and keep trying to find answers. If we quit, the problem is still there, it’s just that now it becomes an unsolved pain that we have to live with rather than one to embrace and celebrate after another success. And the success, no matter how small it might seem, is another piece of the solution.

We don’t have to be smart, we just need to never give up.

What Does ‘Shocking The Muscle’ Actually mean?

Shocking the muscle is a term that I have used many times myself and, despite the physiological inaccuracies, I’ll use it again within my career. However, muscles don’t exactly get ‘shocked’ into growing. If only we could quickly grab a couple of heavy ass dumbbells and complete one curl for our biceps to say,’Whoa dude you got me good that time. How big do you want me?’

Training for muscle growth requires adaptation cycles that create new stresses to the muscle. Through repeated exposure to a certain exercise or training programme the body adapts. Once the body adapts, you need to ‘shock the muscle’ by creating a new stimulus that compels it to adapt and grow. And so the cycle continues.

So this is why the term shocking the muscle becomes overused and misconstrued. A shock refers to a sudden, surprising experience or event. And as anyone in the natural bodybuilding game will tell you, there is nothing sudden in muscle growth. In fact your muscle doesn’t need a surprise party. It needs a well thought out plan that you commit to almost every day for months and years until it understands what it needs to bring to your party.

There is a difference between the maintenance resistance trainer and the adaptation resistance trainer. 95% of trainers in the resistance area of the gym are maintaining their current physique, which is great by the way, yet I’m not convinced that this is their goal. Shocking the muscle to most people is doing a set of deadlifts because ‘I haven’t done them in a while’. Give it 5 minutes and I guarantee they’ll be curling again. They’ve ‘shocked’ their muscle enough for this week.

Like I say, getting to the gym, maintaining muscle and staying active is great. But you must understand that being in a room full of people lifting weights to me is like a roofer watching people try to fix their own roof. They might eventually get a roof, but the drips will appear shortly. So a maintenance job is all good and well until you find that what you’re getting isn’t what you wanted.

Since moving most of my business online I have found out that, for most men in particular, they don’t want me to be physically stood next to them in the gym. Regular gym goers already have a decent grasp on their form. But what they didn’t understand and why they approach me is to help them create a progressive programme that takes them through adaptation cycles. They didn’t know how to shock their muscle onto another level. Many of these guys have impressive physiques too, but the more experienced they are in the gym the harder it is to create extra muscle growth… especially with stagnant workouts that they’ve done for years.

It’s not always about just keeping the rain out, some people want thatched roofs, skylights and solar panels. And for that I’d get a qualified roofer.

Muscle And Aesthetics

If you currently follow a fitness programme the chances are one of the goals on your list will be to look your best. That’s totally natural. Hitting the gym to be fitter and stronger also has this great bonus of actually making you look your best. And if you train with the purpose of muscle hypertrophy then you might even prioritize the aesthetics over the health benefits. Either way, training can be fun when we start to see things happen to the body as it can make us feel more confident about ourselves. In fact, I fail to see a single negative aspect of exercise. It literally ticks all the boxes.

But a massive tick for lots of people is the box titled ‘aesthetics’, AKA ‘looking damn fine’, AKA ‘smokin’, AKA ‘sun’s out, guns out’. This type of training is commonly known as muscle hypertrophy and recently I read an article about the muscle parts that are seen as the most attractive and appealing. It focussed quite a lot on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest and Hulk Hogan’s biceps and I’d like to add my own entries there with Beyonce’s rear and Jack Grealish’s legs. But I’m pretty sure that most of my readers are not movie star bodybuilders, WWE wrestlers, global pop superstars or Premier League footballers. So I’d like to address hypertrophy and which muscle can look the best for the every day folk. After all, we don’t all have time or money for an in-house PT or a fully equipped home gym to train in everyday to acquire the hypertrophy that our celebrated friends have.

Firstly, it is important to point out that your genetics are different from the next person. Your body will be able to adapt to something much easier that someone else but they will have different qualities to you. Therefore going to the gym to blow up your shoulders five times a week won’t progress them past the sarcoplasmic (pumped) stage if you ignore the rest of your body… especially the stuff that you are particularly good at!

So this is where you need to begin. Start with the stuff that you enjoy and are already good at. Your mate might have big shoulders because A. It’s their favourite body part to train or B. They are helped along by freaky genetics that enables broad back/shoulders. If your friend’s dad needs to enter a door sideways then there’s a very good chance that they will too. Add that fact to what is their favourite body part to train and they will end up with pretty impressive shoulders. But that doesn’t mean it is where you will excell. You need to find your own niche.

Your friend will still need to train the rest of their body. If they don’t, their genetics and well worked delts will look odd if they have underdeveloped legs or chest.

For natural muscle hypertrophy for aesthetics, you need to train every body part. But even if you can only manage three gym sessions a week there’s gains to be made with the correct planning and nutrition. In a one hour session your focus should be hitting high reps on as many muscle groups as possible for more than half of it and then you can focus on your best bits on a series of isolations. If it’s your chest, then do dumbell pullover to flyes supersets. If it’s your legs then perform leg extensions to lunge supersets. Not only would you see progression in your underdeveloped areas but the muscle groups that you naturally excell with will keep you wearing t-shirts or shorts well into December.

Play to your strengths in every session, but make sure that you do the other stuff first. Compounds that hit every muscle will compliment your best bits. Compounds increase testosterone,muscle and bone density, regulates fat distribution and red blood cell production. So the most attractive and appealing muscle group that you have is the muscles that you are the most adept at working…as long as you’ve put the ground work in on the rest!

Personally, my shoulders are my trophy muscle. They stand out nicely in a T. But as I said earlier, this is helped by genetics along with my calves which have always gained attention since playing football as a kid. So training these areas are pleasing to me because I see rewards instantly. I give a nod to these muscles regularly because I like how they make me look, but I know that I can’t ignore my other muscle groups even if it means performing my least enjoyable exercises. And despite being a PT I have many.

Aesthetics is something that we don’t always want to talk about as Personal Trainers. We’re supposed to be promoting the physical health benefits and the need to exercise for our mental health has been well publicised in recent years. But if you see muscle development and you feel pretty damn good about yourself because of your aesthetic look then don’t be ashamed that this is what you trained hard for. Looking good helps your mental health too! So give a little tense and a pose the next time you walk past your mirror. No-one is looking!

Fail Better

As a kid I had this unhealthy attitude towards winning and losing. Losing to me was failure. I hated it. But then winning didn’t feel like the best thing in the world either. It felt ok but the negative emotions that I felt during defeat was far stronger than the emotions I had at winning. For years, I was a sore loser.

It didn’t help matters that I also found it difficult to get over a defeat that was out of my control. When the football club that I supported lost it could easily spoil a weekend. So supporting Liverpool in the 90’s gave me many miserable weekends.

Without realising until I was much older I now look back at my old self and wonder what opportunities I missed out on, just in case I failed. Did I not study hard enough during my GCSE years because of the hurt I would put myself through if I didn’t get the grades I wanted? Did I avoid wanting to be noticed at football so that I never had to be told that I wasn’t good enough? Did I miss out on job interviews or promotions because I didn’t want to be judged and told ‘no’? I’m sure many of us reading this can relate to how our younger selves handled these types of situations.

I’m determined for my kids not to go through the same turmoil as me. I want them to succeed in life therefore I need them to fail sometimes. I now know that the biggest learning curve is when you are having to deal with disappointment. Rather than be scared of failure, I want them to appreciate that it happens. It will be inevitable at some stage. Winning is good, but knowing how to do it after bouncing back from defeat is even better. If they can learn to manage their feelings of failure and know how to put it right now, their path to success is much smoother in later life.

In my career I have spoken to people who still sound like they hold that fear and cannot handle disappointed.

“I’d never go to the gym so there’s no point in getting a membership.”

“I’ve got a bad back so I can’t lift weights.”

“My doctor says I need to lose weight but I like eating XYZ too much.”

“I haven’t got time.”

These are all examples of excusing themselves in order to avoid disappointment. And the truth is that they will have had a gym membership before and they will have tried to diet, but their fear of not seeing results has made them quit.

The results are a big problem. We put events in our lives as either success or failure. Did I fail at English GCSE because I got B/B instead of A? Did I fail at football because I was scouted by Leeds City Boys instead of Leeds United? Did I fail in my job because I made a senior instead of managing the whole facility?

I have achieved many things but perhaps sometimes I expected too much too soon which put greater pressure on me. And much like the people I speak to, their expectations are too high. It seems easier to quit than to manage such extreme goals. Their comfort zone of not trying anymore feels safer than having to face defeat.

And yet, actually, there is no defeat as long as they have a plan, stick to it and trust the process. Results worth getting cannot happen in an instant. It does take time and it can be difficult. Sometimes, even feeling like they’ve failed will be there. It has to be there as part of the process. But that’s only because they are human and no matter what successes they have along the way it will always be the one setback that stirs the emotions the most. Using that setback as a springboard to further success is the key. Fail better.

Perhaps Dr Seuss says it best…

“Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best. Wherever you go, you will topple all the rest. Except when you don’t, because sometimes you won’t.”

Momentum

There are periods throughout the year that we might find ourselves taking a couple of weeks away from the gym. This might be due to going away on holiday or other commitments have temporarily taken priority. For me personally I decided to take two weeks away from gym training because of the Easter holidays and I wanted to have fun with the family. I’ve remained active but there’s been a few days where my nutrition has suffered. That hasn’t been down to chocolate eggs, however, as I don’t particularly like chocolate! But I have not controlled my diet so much and allowed for extra calories on occasion. Like I say, I wanted to have fun with the family and not sweat over whether a cheeseburger will destroy 25 years in the gym.

I like to keep things real. It’s how I PT and how I live my life. I am a 43 year old who is happy in their body, feeling and looking better than 20 years ago and who can be honest about when to hit the gym hard and when to let go now and again. I am not a bodybuilder, I am not training for a photo shoot, I am not a professional athlete and I am not the next Spiderman. My cheeseburger won’t need to have a cameo appearance through the lycra. I am, first and foremost, daddy to two little boys.

And although I like to train hard I like to acknowledge why it is that I train in the first place. This past two weeks I have been able to walk long distances, play football in the park and eat food that I wouldn’t usually eat. If we can’t identify or we forget why we do it, then doing it in the first place is so much more difficult. Remember why you do it and write it down if you have to.

During a strength phase I can train up to two hours a day, five days a week. I reckon I’ve lost almost 20 hours of training this holiday. In a two week period, however, the research suggests that I have lost no muscle mass or aerobic capacity. Studies show that we can lose 5-10% of our endurance capabilities after 3 weeks and yet I’ve been much more aerobic in the past two weeks than I would have been in the gym anyway. Simply put, as long as I go back to the gym with a plan on Monday, physically I have lost nothing.

But here’s the problem for so many. After a holiday or any significant time away from the gym there’s no plan in place. So what becomes more important than what we lose physically is the loss of momentum. This leads to further inactivity, less aerobic capacity and muscle mass. Mentally, picking up from where we left it before an illness or a holiday is the big test and even the first session can be a little rusty with form and tempo. It could take a few sessions to get back to how you felt previously. Lifting a few weights was never going to be the difficult part about training, but doing it correctly with the right attitude was.

But if you have a plan and promise yourself a day to get back to your training then you will once again create the habits that you had before your break. You’ve lost nothing but a bit of momentum. Remember why you do it and find it again.

Are Chemicals Found In Our Food Bad For Us?

Why would we eat anything that is also used in building materials and household cleaning products? Well, if you eat fruit, vegetables, meat and fish then you will eat formaldehyde. In fact this chemical is found naturally in most living organisms, albeit in very small doses. Humans also produce formaldehyde in their body as part of a normal metabolic function.

Linalool is a natural occuring terpene alcohol chemical found in citrus fruits which is dangerous in high doses and is more commonly used as a skin care product once extracted from its natural environment.

Chemicals that are often thought of as poisonous and dangerous are often found naturally in our food. I’m not wishing to put you off of your food here, but rather provide reassurance.

So let’s look at my title again…

Are Chemicals Found In Our Food Bad For Us?

No food is bad for us if we have a balanced diet. Eating too many apples in a day can cause illness. Bananas, beef, chicken, chocolate, milk, coffee or any food and drink in excess, can cause illness.

We often categorize foods as either good for us or bad for us. This is led by the media and ‘experts’ who want to tell us what to eat to make a headline or sell a book. Yet we have the power to choose our balanced diet to ensure that a food is never bad. I also don’t believe that ‘superfoods’ actually exist. There is no definition of what a superfood is and although the term is often used to refer to nutrient dense foods such as eggs, salmon, oats, blueberries and broccoli they still have the same effect as any other foods when eaten in excess.

Chocolate is not classed as a ‘superfood’ in any publication I have read. A good reason for this is its high fat and sugar content, yet it does contain the chemical flavonoids which, according to Harvard Medical University, reduces blood pressure. Unfortunately for the chocolate lovers though a daily intake of 30 calories a day is all that is needed, not a 100g bar all to yourself!

And there is the problem. We hear some great news about a food and run with it. I used to drink down 4 raw eggs each morning when I heard of their protein content. But it is only when I decided to vary and balance my diet and explore the different types of food and protein sources did I realize that I didn’t have to crack 4 eggs into a cup and pinch my nose as I slithered them down my throat each day. And even though chocolate is a much more pleasurable experience, just because it possesses flavonoids doesn’t mean stocking the cupboards with mars bars is the right way to go either.

The bottom line is that there are no bad foods, but there are bad choices that many of us keep repeating day after day until it becomes a difficult cycle to get out of. Enjoy food…all of it. But do keep it exciting and varied before you fall into the same trap.

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