My wife is good at making homemade ice-cream. Too good in fact. Last week, after inviting friends over to our house, she made copious amounts of the stuff. The flavours were chocolate, caramel and pecan, malted chocolate (which tasted like a malteaser that had fallen from heaven.)
But it hadn’t come from heaven. The leftovers from our gathering were in our freezer. A freezer which needed to be defrosted and sold on Facebook marketplace.
Hmm. How do we begin to clear out the freezer without any food waste? Shay to the rescue!
I wasn’t expecting to eat all three flavours which spilled out of the bowl tonight. I first looked in the top cupboard for some salted peanuts, but didn’t have any. I then checked the crisp cupboard, but the multipack choices were not exciting me. That’s the problem when you win a freebie on the Lidl scratch card app. You end up with the beef, roast chicken and prawn cocktail flavours instead of cheese and onion.
It was only when my wife mentioned that the freezer needed clearing out did I remember the ice cream.
After a tough day at work and only getting snippets of information regarding our VISA and business set up in Portugal from my wife’s texts, by the time the evening arrived I was ready to emotionally eat.
I love coming home to my wife and kids, but I can’t pretend that the chaos of our home, with packed boxes piling up and the certain uncertainties that moving house/country brings can be a stressy time in the Durant-Duckworth household. Emotions are running high. I sometimes deal with that with the occasional emotional eat.
I am, of course, following the Never Give Up Personal Training handbook. I have always told my clients to give themselves a break if they make certain food choices during emotional times in their lives. It’s about identifying your needs.
The term ’emotional eating’ is often seen as a bad thing. It’s a weak act. It’s a crux that we need to rid ourselves of. Instead, we should go for a jog or slog it out in the gym. Sod that, tonight I wanted ice cream. Ok, I wanted salted peanuts or cheese and onion crisps but the ice-cream was more than a suitable replacement for giving me a big emotional hug.
We are emotional creatures. And with such complex needs as ours, is it even possible to eat without emotion?!
But the one big, big rule that we must remember is that the slice of cake, the bowl of cheesy pasta or indeed the serving of half of the freezer tasting of malteasers is that you can identify that this is a moment of emotional eating. It is a perfectly acceptable way to ease your emotions as long as you recognise it as your choice.
You have lots of choices when you are faced with an emotional time. For me, I turn to exercise, meditation, talking to others (usually my wife), watching or listening to something funny, watching football, having sex or having a glass of red. But I cannot deny that eating can sometimes trump all of the above. It is an option and sometimes I use it.
And once you can recognise that this is as acceptable as any other coping mechanism then you will begin to improve on your physical and mental wellbeing.
Identifying your needs for every given situation will be different. This is because every situation will pose very different challenges to the next. Just know that you have options. You are in control. You get to choose.
Go to the gym. Have a run. Meditate. By all means do all of those positive things. But never feel guilty about an occasional bowl of ice cream to give you an emotional pick up. And enjoy the whole damn thing!
Well here I go. After all my constant talk of planning for your fitness goals I feel as though I am at a point where I can’t really plan for my own fitness goals. Not with any great precision anyway.
I have no gym and my time is compromised coming into a very busy summer period with work and the kids being off school. Oh, and with a house search in another country to plan, my health and fitness goals are getting further away.
I hope, seeing as I have now left training people in commercial gyms, that the legacy I left is that I am a ‘real life’ trainer. I’m honest, work to a client’s strengths and I am motivated in reaching realistic goals. So then, if I were having a chat with Shay the personal trainer, what would he say to me?
Me: I’ve not got any training plan in place for the rest of this year. I will have no time during the summer holidays as I will be busy with work each day. After the summer holidays I will be finishing off my packing to move to Portugal. Once I’m there there’s going to be lots of driving, researching and preparing for my business.
Shay PT: Your work will involve coaching sports to kids. Last year you were counting over 20,000 steps per day. That’s at least 10,000 extra steps than the recommended daily target for the average person. Also, a lot of preparation for your business will involve landscaping the land. Physical work such as this can burn around 500 calories per hour. So your NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) is looking very healthy indeed!
Also, you have a selection of resistance equipment that you will eventually be taking to Portugal. Before you pack them up, think of a 30 minute routine that you can do in the garden on a decent summer’s evening after you’ve put the kids to bed. Promise yourself 3 of these sessions a week. And I know you have the time. It just means watching one less episode of the series you’re watching.
So your activity levels are looking pretty good, but it’ll mean nothing unless you keep your nutrition on track. That takes a little preparation. Make your lunch in the evening for the next day. For breakfast, stick to drinking your fruit and oat smoothies. Make sure that vegetables are available for every evening meal. Keep convenient, fast food to a minimum but don’t be too restrictive. No food should be banned.
A plan doesn’t have to involve regimented routines and dull food. Nothing I have just mentioned is life changing stuff. It’s just a sensible few tweaks to ensure that you stay on track for when you have more time and you are more settled in your new home.
My youngest is a fussy eater. He’s always been the same. Even as a baby we were concerned about his milk intake and then, when it came to solids, his fussiness continued into eating very little and with only a couple of things that he would entertain. And none of them with great nutritional value.
At almost 7, he has improved and will try the odd bit of different food that the rest of us have on our plates, but only for 50p. Yes, we have to bribe him to eat anything remotely healthy.
Tea times are awkward. Whatever the boys want for tea it will always come with a good portion of veg. They enjoy fish fingers and we will be happy to prepare these as long as they eat the veg as a non-negotiable. But our eldest has a varied diet as well as wanting the usual processed stuff that most kids like. So my wife and I are often making two or three different meals over tea time.
And then there’s the peas. A big bag of frozen veg to last the week is a good investment for the boys. Or so we thought. Now our youngest will only eat the peas from his serving of veg. And if there’s any evidence that another veg has touched a pea he will not eat it. Which means that I am left picking out the peas before preparing them to serve. With a hundred things to do at any given time, picking out the peas out of a mixed bag of frozen veg is never up there as a priority.
We’ve tried keeping him seated until has eaten his full meal, but this has led to tears and I don’t think that him having negative memories around food and meal times is productive either. So his mum and I will continue to cater for this fussiness.
So, while he is counting his columns of 50p’s, you’ll find me in the kitchen counting frozen peas.
If someone were to give me a choice in having abs or not, then I would gratefully receive them.
If they then explained what I had to do to maintain and keep the abs I would decline the offer.
One of the most difficult things for a personal trainer to coach is a client wanting abs, AKA a six pack.
So here’s the thing. We all have them, it’s just some are more covered than others. And it is fat that covers them.
It is said that a man needs to be below 12% body fat to actually see a six pack and around 18% for a female. And, although this is achievable for people in general, maintaining this is very difficult indeed.
I regularly go from 12% to 18% depending on the time of year and at my lowest body fat there is a decent amount of definition in the six pack area. However, due to my diet it is impossible for me to edge past down to the 10% mark, where the definition would be very impressive.
And yet my diet is not poor. My calories per day average around 2800 (taken from an annual calculation) and most of my meals are nutritional. But it is nowhere near the strict regime that would be necessary for more definition on my abs or anywhere else!
It was a long time ago that I ditched the idea of going to the gym to get a six pack and it’s around the same time I decided that I liked going for a pint with colleagues after work. Now, I enjoy sneaking in an extra fish finger in the air fryer while I’m making the kids tea.
Abs are made in the kitchen. Indeed, muscle definition anywhere on the body is made in the kitchen. However, that doesn’t mean that having a physically fit physique means a life of chicken, broccoli and rice, washed down with a protein shake every meal time.
An 80/20 rule might not be the clean diet that is necessary for abs of steel, but it is sensible for the majority of people. 80% of your diet is nutritional and balanced while 20% is the other stuff that might not help towards a six pack but it tastes bloody nice!
A popular gym quote goes something like this…”People need to understand the difference between wants and needs. Like I want abs, but I need tacos.”
I could replace tacos with the leftover fish finger, that bit of mayo on the spoon before it goes in the dishwasher, brie cheese with cream crackers, my wife’s homemade ice cream, crumpets with too much butter and pringles and this quote would apply to me. But I make sure that it remains within that 20% of food that I have accounted for. Therefore, even though my abs aren’t defined, I keep a physique that I am happy with. After all, a six pack isn’t the definition of fit and healthy.
So, maybe considering your eating habits a little more and trying to achieve the 80/20 could be a good way for you to progress in your fitness goals. This way, you get to enjoy your workouts and you don’t have to ban your favourite foods.
A big motivation for me to write my blogs was always to dispel the myths surrounding our health and fitness so that we could safely enter a fitness program or nutritional journey without wading through the murky waters that are bogus articles, magic pill advertisements and other fitness professionals giving out misinformation.
A fitness goal should be fun to embark on without unnecessary jargon, untruths and charlatans making it stressful.
And so I feel it necessary to come to the defense of the humble cheese, grilled or not grilled, for my latest findings. As this week, a gym member approached me to ask if it was true that grilled cheese adds more calories to non grilled cheese.
This is a very valid question, especially when you consider that it was a fitness professional who told her. After all, they’re the ones in the know right?!
But after thinking about how this could possibly be, the gym member looked for a second opinion. I must admit, the logic and the simplicity of the answer that I wanted to give (a resounding no it doesn’t!) Couldn’t leave my mouth. It could be that the fitness professional had done their research into this and knew more than me on the subject. So I said that I doubt it, but I’ll do some digging and find out for sure!
Rule number one for any budding Personal Trainers out there…don’t be afraid to say that you aren’t sure but you’ll get back to them with an answer. And even if you do know the answer, say that you don’t know but you’ll get back to them. You want their contact details remember! But it also stops you from being a bit of a know-it-all and, as this post suggests, one day you’ll give a wrong answer without doing your research.
Ok, back to cheese.
My findings were clear and just as I had thought. The calories do not get any higher from grilling it.
However, and this is perhaps where the confusion lies, it becomes easier for the body to digest cooked food therefore the body works less than when digesting raw food resulting in the body burning less calories. But the numbers are small. It’s like having 8p in your piggy bank when you need to save £20,000. It won’t make a huge dent.
Still, this doesn’t apply to grilled cheese. But could there be another reason to believe that grilled cheese is higher in calories than non grilled cheese?
Hmm. There is a theory that we tend to over indulge when we eat cheese on toast or toasties. We might add butter or use oil before applying the cheese perhaps, or maybe choose white bread instead of wholemeal. Yet it doesn’t change the caloric make up of cheese. The issue here is on a person’s food prep habits, not the cheese. It’s like feeling bloated after eating a full strawberry cheesecake and blaming the strawberries.
I love cheese. I’ll eat it in some form almost daily. Although I wouldn’t advise following my addiction to cheese and eating too much of it too often, I would recommend eating a cheese toasty or a cheese on toast occasionally.
It’s even better on cheap white bread, but don’t tell anyone I told you so.
We get so wrapped up in extremes these days and, perhaps in the age of the internet, it is more apparent than ever for us humans.
Everything we do and say is often interpreted as a hyperbolic representation of us as individuals. Others do it to us, but we are likely to do this to ourselves too as some sort of self fulfilled prophecy.
If you publicly laugh at an Alf Garnet joke you are judged to be a right wing fascist and if you welcome black mermaids in a new kids Disney movie then you are labelled a woke looney lefty.
I do both. I confuse the extremists.
But something very dangerous is happening to our culture that I, as a personal trainer, feel should be addressed regarding what we eat. Diets are becoming more and more extreme by the week.
I decided fairly quickly in my life as a PT to avoid creating meal plans for my clients. Even if they specifically asked for them, if they were not an elite athlete that had to continuously hit certain weights (boxers, jockeys) and macros then it was not necessary. The average gym goer will not benefit from such an extreme method. And if a fitness professional demands that you follow a meal plan then I would suggest that they are trying to upsell their product.
Apps such as calorie and macro counters are usually a good place to begin a weight loss or muscle hypertrophy journey. Even then, they are only necessary for a few weeks until you can discover what each meal can provide in terms of nutrition.
But the problem with meal planners is that they are…
A. Designed by someone else.
B. Do not account for your different moods or hunger throughout the day and
C. Can cause you to feel demoralised when you cannot follow it.
My life, for example, is not so well structured that I am able to prep and eat a certain meal at a certain time of day every day. Will I always have those ingredients in the kitchen? Will an emergency at work or home derail my timing? With food costs going up, will I be able to afford these meals? Is my PT telling me to buy, prep and eat all of this while he plans my life in his bedroom and his mum makes him his tea?!
(The last one actually happens, trust me.)
And what if I miss a meal or find an alternative food? Does this waste all of my previous efforts? Should I just give it up as a bad job? Maybe I’m just not ready to lose weight/become healthier/ build muscle.
No!
It means that I’m human. I’m not programmed to eat half a chicken breast, one handful of broccoli and one cup of rice at 12:30 just because it is written on a piece of paper on my fridge door.
Yesterday, I had the following breakfast…
Two white buns, buttered. Inside each of them I put one slice of bacon, one hash brown, one fried egg, mushrooms, one slice of black pudding and baked beans. Here’s the evidence…
I enjoyed every guilt free moment of it because I have no restrictions on my diet. But I can only have this ‘no food ban’ in place if I keep to some sensible rules…
* I make sure that I eat fruit and veg throughout the day.
* I don’t eat extra high calorie meals every day.
* I try to vary my meals regularly so that I do not fall into a rut resulting in boredom or habit forming.
* I acknowledge the calories and macros of each meal, but even more importantly, I recognise how each meal makes me feel. For example, do I feel sluggish? Am I drinking extra water due to excess salt consumption? Do I feel satisfied? Will this meal sustain me in whatever activity I have planned to do next?
My breakfast from yesterday isn’t a bad meal. It becomes a poor choice, however, if I were to have it today and tomorrow and the day after and so on. So I won’t.
Instead, my breakfast this morning looks like this…
This drink consists of one apple, a banana, a pear and plenty of spinach topped up with water. This is my usual start to the day, but yesterday I just fancied a change.
Both breakfasts made me happy.
Extreme dieting methods can be damaging to your relationship with food and ultimately your health. So let’s look at a few steps to a sensible approach…
* If you find yourself craving a certain food and have started to eat this for the past few days then this can create a habit that is unwelcome. Even a fruit and veg smoothie using the same ingredients every day can be detrimental. Try new and different fruit and veg for example. This will ensure that you remain interested in making a fruit smoothie each day if that is your goal. And as much as I loved my full English breakfast in a bun, the calories and trans fats are not something that I can put into my body each day. Keep it to the odd occasion.
* If you are going out for the evening and you know that there will be lovely food and drink on offer, then approach this occasion sensibly. You want to have a good time without calorie counting every single drop! For a day or two, cut back on calorie dense foods. For example, stay away from a full English in a bun or a takeaway in the lead up to a night out. Also, I find a good workout on the day of a big night out helps me stay focussed. It doesn’t ruin my enjoyment, but If I feel the effects of a workout it enables me to keep my goals in the back of my mind even if I’m ordering the gin and tonics.
* Appreciate ALL food types. And you can do this whilst acknowledging that high nutritious food is excellent fuel for your body and your mind. Don’t be down on yourself if you’ve been fuelling your body with great nutrition but suddenly find yourself chowing down on a full English breakfast butty. Eat it and move on.
* Stay away from extreme diet sites and companies that want your money while you question yourself and feel inadequate. And don’t take too much notice of Dave from admin who lost 2 stone by following the new fad Facebook diet. You will lose weight on any diet that puts you in a calorie deficit. But you’ll only keep it off if it doesn’t require extreme measures such as very low daily calories, counting your ‘syns’ or taking pills. Your approach right from the off has to be sustainable for your lifestyle.
* Buy high nutritional food and bring it into your home. Cupboards and fridges should be stocked with 80% of the high nutritious foods and 20% of the rest of your favourite foods. Once it is in your home, you can start making some of your favourite healthy dishes and freezing them. Sauces are easily made in large quantities and frozen in those tubs that you get from the takeaway!
So, before I get asked about this, I’ll comment on it now. Are syn’s from Slimming World really all that extreme?!
Well, this is a method which…
1. Calls higher calorie foods a syn. Ok, it means synergy to SW, but does the term syn trigger something to you which means it is bad for you? I’m afraid it’s poor taste in light of the mental health problems we have as a society regarding the way we look. And
2. Bananas are a ‘free’ food unless it is mashed. Then it becomes a syn. Three points on that…
a) A banana has never ever been a reason for a person’s weight gain. Mashed or unmashed.
b) If we demonize the poor mashed banana then what of the full English butty?! What chance do we have with our physical and mental health or weight control if we see mashed up banana as a reason why we are failing?
c) banana gets mashed when you put it in your mouth. Sooooo…..
Whether it is the PT writing out your next week’s meal plan, the media with their hyperbolic headlines or the big companies with very clever marketing campaigns, you can be sure that they are all capable of taking us to the extreme when it comes to the food that we eat.
I hope, with a little common sense and a step back from the nonsense, we can all start making some delicious choices from now on.
My two boys love going to their grandparents for an overnight stay. Their granddad, a professional refurbisher of bar billiards tables, often has a finished table in his garage so the boys can take their pool cues that they got for Christmas.
They also get to stay up later on an evening than they would do if they were at home. Staying up later is always a treat! But the biggest treat of all for my 6 and 9 year olds are the meal times at Granny and Granddad’s.
An overnight stay will usually consist of a takeaway or a meal out for burgers or pizzas and a dessert afterwards with a fizzy drink to wash it down with. Basically, lots of foods with very little nutrition.
But I can’t pin this all on their Grandparents, absolutely not! The boys also have occasional takeaway meals or frozen pizzas and chips at home too. The boys have been invited to friends houses for tea, they’ve gone to Macdonald’s for birthday parties, they receive toys for buying ‘Happy Meals,’ supermarket meal deals involve crisps and chocolate, going to the movies encourage us to eat buckets of popcorn lager than my youngest child and reformed chicken comes in the shape of dinosaurs. All of these things appeal to adults too, so we cannot ignore the fact that children will be drawn to such inviting foods.
As parents and grandparents we can’t avoid it, but that doesn’t get us adults off the hook.
I have previously written an article about children being ‘The Great Imitators’. As much as parents believe that their children often do the exact opposite as of what is asked of them, their brains are gathering all of this information that they see and hear and then used as a survival mechanism for when they need it.
How we interact with our partners and colleagues, what we watch on TV, our language, the way we dress and what we eat are all closely observed by the young mind.
As my role as a coach for children during half term, I’m fully aware of how I talk to my fellow coaches. Children listen. Children copy. I’m also very careful about what I eat at lunchtimes with the children. I wouldn’t eat a Greggs steak bake in front of them after having a talk to them about healthy eating. There’s a time and a place. Even for a Greggs steak bake.
So how do we get our children to be more mindful about what they eat? Firstly, it is important to not criticize or ridicule any meal choices that they make. Food should never make anyone feel anxious or ‘bad’. Food should be enjoyed, yes, all food. If a child enjoys chicken dippers then ask them what they enjoy about them. How does it feel and taste to them? Talk to them about what you can add to the plate alongside their dippers.
At home, the boys know that if they ask for fish fingers or chicken dippers it will come with wholemeal wraps, mayo, ketchup and a good sized portion of vegetables. It’s a compromise. For about two years and especially for our youngest who looks like a celebrity doing a bushtucker trial when he’s eating broccoli, the veg wouldn’t be touched without having tears. Now, because we continued putting the vegetables on his plate consistently and he sees his older brother and his parents eat the veg on their plates, he eats his veg without any prompts. He watched and he copied.
We can’t expect our children to choose better options with anything in life unless they see the grown ups doing it too! Sure, their teenage brain along with other teenage peers and influences will challenge their decision making. It is one of the most feared periods for a parent and one I’m yet to experience, but if we can promote the right messages into their young brains now then at least we are giving them a fighting chance as young adults.
My message is clear to the adults that I train and the children that I coach, you can still enjoy all food types and be mindful about what we need to enable our bodies to grow strong, to be healthy and happy, to excel in what they enjoy and to survive. The balance is something that is important to find and it is my job as a parent and coach to help people do that, whether for adults or children. After all, what age group doesn’t like to find the letters of their name with a plate of Alphabites?
I’m already starting to see the frustration in many newcomers to the gym that I train at. Their new years resolution and ‘new year, new start’ good intentions are beginning to wobble already.
This isn’t new. Professionally I’ve witnessed this for 10 years and personally for almost 30 years. The average person who begins a fitness journey generally calls it a day before they’ve had a chance to make any serious impact on their health, fitness or aesthetics.
Why?
My theory is that restricting oneself to a set date can be dull, uninspiring and demotivating if you simply are not ‘in the mood’ at that specific time. We cannot simply switch on and become something that we have not been for the past several months or years and in many cases, forever.
I use the term ‘catching the wave’ when it comes to specific life goals, be it in the gym or in general ambitions. Timing is important.
Catching the wave is an idiom that refers to taking advantage of a moment of good fortune or an occurrence in time and creating a sustainable, practical routine that can help you achieve your goals.
Riding the crest of this wave might not last forever, but because your memories of your successes are still fresh in your mind, you will find it much easier to catch the next wave. Much like the surfer, getting back onto the surf board after falling into the sea becomes much easier with practice.
But if we ignore the signs, most commonly our bodies and our minds, then all we have is a dreaded day in which we have to do something that we don’t really want to do.
Let’s take Jeremy as an example. He promised himself that he would join a gym on the second of January. He had never joined a gym before and, apart from the occasional 5 a side football game with his friends, had never been into a fitness centre at all.
But he had started to feel sluggish and lethargic. He couldn’t run with his young children or pick them up. His diet suffered due to the difficult cycle of feeling depressed because of his health and appearance so he comforted himself with food.
His new year’s resolution was to join the gym. The problem is that not only did the wave not come, he didn’t actually know how to catch it even if it had. After a few weeks of going to the gym and slogging out a few sessions a week he felt demoralised by not seeing any changes to his health or appearance and a few niggling injuries had started to occur. Jeremy became one of the many numbers of people who join the gym in January and don’t continue to go after February.
How to fix it!
As I have stated, a new year’s resolution gives a restrictive time frame. You must start at the beginning of a new year! Yet a few new tweaks towards a healthier outlook can, and should, happen at ANY time of year.
Rather than beginning a regime of a fad diet and 5 gym sessions a week, try starting by walking more. Research a few local areas that are popular for walkers and give them a go. It doesn’t have to be a full day of rambling. Just an hour will do.
Pick out a few of your favourite fruit and veg and start adding these to your plate more. These will add numerous nutritional benefits and create satiety, which allows you to feel fuller for longer. Also, making fruit and veg smoothies can help you get your required amounts if you don’t usually eat them in a meal.
Hire a PT. The feeling is that Personal Training can be a ‘no pain, no gain’ sort of attitude full of Burpees and just about everything else that is horrible. The reality is that a good PT, as long as you tell them that you are new to exercise, will give you advice similar to my first two points. Move a little bit more and add fruit and veg to your diet. If they go straight into Burpees then sack them. Also, PT can be done online these days which is cheaper. A good PT will get to know you and develop a routine for you that you enjoy and will even know when you are on the crest of a wave or if you’re in the sea!
And finally, to really find that wave, if you feel like doing it, just do it! Start saying yes to the 5 a side games more. Go for a walk or a run. Start swimming. Or just join the gym at any time of year!
You might find that one of these activities becomes a passion and something that really motivates you. Eventually , you find yourself riding a wave. And if you ever fall off, rather than wait until a new year, you’ll know how to get back on much easier, much sooner.
I am a Personal Trainer, meditation teacher, health and fitness blogger, husband and dad.
Seeing as our previous holiday outside of the UK was just before the 2020 lockdown hit, we decided to take a week in central Portugal with our boys this January. We weren’t disappointed.
Staying in the centre of a city can give you a good idea of a place and our apartment was above cafés on a busy street. Wherever we went, we came across lots of cafés. The vibes were positive. My morning routine soon became going to the nearest cafe with the boys and choosing a few patisseries for them to take back up to the apartment while I sat outside the cafe soaking up the atmosphere with a double espresso.
I can see the attraction of this cafe culture in places like Tomar. This is how many of the locals would start their day, congregating around a table on the pavement and having a chat. I enjoyed people watching. My eavesdropping, however, wasn’t so good in Portuguese. You get good thinking time in the few minutes that it takes to drink an espresso too. In just a week, most of my best business plans came in that moment each morning. Whatever our plans. Whatever we aspire to achieve, whatever we want to do with our lives, we need thinking time in order to do it.
And Tomar was indeed partly a business trip. But with two kids with us, everything is generally a little unconventional. We had to merge a holiday with the stuff that we went there to do. The kids loved it. In fact, they enjoyed the bits where Lou and I had appointments and had to travel.
We enjoy a holiday in the sun by the beach with a water park outside of our hotel, but they seem to also appreciate talking to people in another language, taking notice of the architecture, trying different food and finding out about the history of towns and cities that they visit. Many locals didn’t speak English and Tomar is steeped in history, so we all enjoyed learning along the way.
Of course, I had to try the different food and drinks on offer during my stay. It’s a good job it is ‘bulking season’! However, the pastal de natas that I ate each morning aren’t a great dietary need for any time of the season, they just tasted good! So did the wine!
Getting back to a steady diet and a training routine will take a few days. Whenever we have a period of time off it can have that sort of impact on our energy and motivation. I know that I’ll have a couple of ‘sluggish’ gym sessions which can deter people from carrying on. It’s easy to think that all of the hard work and good progress is lost after a period of time eating lots of food and having time away from training, but it really isn’t. The body needs down time too. And there’s no better place than in a cafe in Tomar.
I didn’t dress for Halloween to be scary. Although a man in his 40’s wearing an inflatable Yoshi and Super Mario costume running around the streets might have creeped some people out. Anyway, my kids loved it and with the response from the other kids doing their trick or treat rounds, it went down well this Halloween.
There’s something very inevitable about Halloween that is as predictable as a Mariah Carey song at Christmas. I eat and drink rubbish. White bread looking like tombstones, pizza, cheap hotdogs, crisps in the shape of ghosts, cake draped in marzipan, beer and wine to be exact. I tried to convince myself that, seeing as I had Yoshi with me, I was eating for two. He’s a hungry little dude.
But I accounted for the evening binge by how I behave the rest of the year. Indeed, there will be other occasions where I’ll abandon my structured eating habits this year and it is all within my caloric limits. This is how I know that I won’t put on unnecessary weight.
For many years I have assisted people in balancing their diets. I am proof that we can eat whatever we like on special occasions without the guilt, the ill health or the weight gain. We can live our lives without the restrictions of formal diets.
If we can plan for the occasional ‘day off’ of protein powders, fruit smoothies and the training schedule then it is very easy to appreciate it, enjoy it and move on. But planning it is the key. It’s my birthday in two weeks and, again, this will be a planned day (or two) away from thinking about my nutrition too much. As long as I put the work in-between these events then I am confident that I will be absolutely fine with no regrets.
My only regret about Halloween is that I didn’t go as Bane.
Never Give Up PT 