Seeing as I am writing a post all about a lemon, you could be forgiven for thinking that I would take this opportunity to bring up the ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ quote.
But you would be wrong.
You might think, seeing as I entitled this blog Lemon, that I will draw similarities with how squeezing a lemon is like squeezing the most out of each day, giving you that zest for life.
And again you would be wrong.
You could, however, be entitled to believe that I am going to give you a string of health benefits from eating this versatile fruit such as helping your body absorb more iron, it is rich in vitamin C and the citric acid can help to prevent the formation of kidney stones.
But, no, your incline would be wrong.
So it is totally feasible for you to think, then, that this article must be about how lemons are also very useful as a natural cleaner, as the citric acid can kill bacteria.
But, guess what? You’d be wrong again.
No. This post is simply dedicated to the biggest, kick ass beast of a lemon that I have ever seen! Thanks to the lemon tree in our garden, we are growing some mahoosive lemons to try to cram into our gin and tonic glasses.
It’s funny. I can look through old photos or the memories pop up on my Facebook feed of my ‘progress pics’.
These usually showed me flexing after a gym sesh. At the time I was a commercial gym personal trainer and it felt important to put myself out there on social media and show everyone my ‘results’.
I can tell you now that I don’t regret any of that. I enjoyed the ‘toilet poses’, something that me, other trainers and clients would do. This is where you have a kick ass workout and then go to the changing rooms, flex, take a pic and put it on social media. After all, golfers want to record their hole in one, an angler wants to show friends their big catch and a boxer is proud of their knockout punch. And so a gym goer should be proud to flex.
But right now I don’t have that need to do it. Sure, my training has been erratic. I keep myself very active and consider myself in good condition at 45. I am currently brush cutting 20,000 square metres of land with a 20k machine attached to my hip. But I haven’t been weight training, so the only time I flex these days is when I’m replicating the Bruce Willis scene in Friends. Basically, just after a shower in my bedroom I start acting like Hulk Hogan in front of the mirror. My friends on social media don’t need to see that!
I read a quote recently that resonated. It read,”Noise creates illusions, silence brings truth.”
I don’t feel like I need to showcase my body anymore. I don’t need to show you my personal best bench press.
I’m happy for the noise to be coming from the new PT’s who feel they have something to prove and who want to create something on social media. This ‘illusion’, I believe, is still important in commercial gyms. People buy into it. The buff, popular trainer who flexes on social media will always have clients in that moment.
But now I prefer to work in silence. And the truth is that I feel more of a complete person now than I ever have done. I have nothing to prove to anyone.
Maybe it’s an age thing, or perhaps I’ve reached a certain time in my life where I just don’t give a fuck. But I just don’t feel like anybody needs to see me flex my lats during a pull down. I’d much rather post the beautiful carpet of purple foxgloves in the garden.
Training remains my life. In fact, as I’ve said many times in my articles, training saved my life. Before I started at a gym, I was depressed and without a cause. The gym gave me a focus and I loved it. Still do. But now it’s different. In a way you need to earn your badges in a commercial gym before you find your true path as a trainer. Well now I’ve found mine. The journey was noisy, but now I’m enjoying the silence.
‘There is a hidden message in every waterfall. It says if you are flexible, falling will not hurt you.’ Mehmet Murat Ildan.
As a child and then into my adult life I often felt a sadness that I could not explain. It was deep rooted, as if nothing could ever make me feel settled or comfortable within myself. I longed for something to truly make me happy.
The Portuguese have a term for this which is ‘saudade’. There is no direct translation into English for this word.
But I must explain more clearly. I have had some wonderful experiences in my life. Some things that have given me great memories that I will treasure. My childhood home was a stable, happy home. My early adult life had its turbulence, I suppose, like for most young people but I kept jobs, got promotions, had healthy relationships, studied and learnt new things. As I got older I met my future wife, became a father, bought and sold houses and began new career ventures. And now we live in Portugal with the hope of a bright, exciting future. All of these things have helped me to be happy. But, especially in my earlier life, that sadness in the pit of my core would not vanish completely. It was like a whoosh of anxiety that really felt like a black cloud hanging over me.
In recent years I have discovered ways to help me feel differently. To take away those anxieties.
Exercise and weight training became my release. Damaging muscle fibres in order for them to regenerate was a whole lot better way of self harm than that which had run through my youthful self. And that’s what it felt like. I wanted to punish myself and my body. There were times that I was disgusted at looking at myself in the mirror. Lifting something heavy several times and feeling pain gave me some sort of release.
Then, in later life, as well as keeping an exercise training routine (but a much more positive one these days), I began to meditate. This has enabled me to control my breathing from the core and, knowing that this is where the whooshy anxiety comes from, really helps me to address it from deep within.
Staring At The Waterfall
There’s this image that I had, and seemingly many other people have, that meditation is about sitting cross legged, eyes closed and hands in a certain pose. It is often associated with Buddhism or other religious practices. And there is also this perception of meditation being done in a dark quiet room, perhaps accompanied with chimes or flute music.
Whilst all of these can be done during meditating, it is certainly not my usual go-to style. Today, I stood by a waterfall. I was with my family, so the kids were their usual rowdy selves. It didn’t deter me. For a few moments, I was mesmerized by the sight, sounds and the smells of this waterfall. Every drop of water danced differently to the next. Each sound I captured went from a trickle to a splash. The smell felt fresh, sometimes the scent of a sandy beach caught my attention.
I said that I was mesmorized for a few moments. The truth is it could’ve been just ten seconds or it could have been minutes. I’m not sure. But I soon became aware of the kids strangling each other so I sorted that little issue out before taking a few pictures!
Over the past few years as I have pursued this journey of self enlightenment I have learnt one big lesson. I need to be flexible in nurturing my emotions. Sometimes I trickle. Sometimes I splash. There’s no right or wrong way.
I now know that this deep rooted sadness cannot harm me. I can live for the moment, whether I’m trickling or splashing, and be grateful and happy with my life.
Today I felt like I was the waterfall. And we could argue on whether or not looking at a waterfall is actually meditation, but my conclusion would be that if you have to think about this then you are losing the magic of the moment. Call it what you like. As long as we can take a moment to realise the beauty in something that we might otherwise take for granted. A singing bird. The rustling of a tree. Or a waterfall.
I’ve discovered that it is not what I look at that matters, it is what I see (or hear, touch and smell). I can look at a waterfall that I pass most days, but what I see when I actually take that moment is a work of beauty, history, a creation that tells me a story. It speaks to me.
So my flexibility of thought has enabled me to see, not just look. And maybe I will pass this waterfall a dozen times again and look at it, but I know that when I need to, I will actually see it.
It is the age old question in the gym in regards to what is the best type of training for weight management or, as is commonly known as, fat loss.
“Should I use weights?”
“Do I join a high intensity class or go on treadmills?”
“Is it high reps or low reps?”
These sorts of questions are the most frequently asked to a Personal Trainer in a commercial gym.
The correct answer, of course, is never that simple. Every individual is different, yes, but generally all of the above are perfectly fine ways to manage weight for the average adult.
To elaborate on these answers I could also suggest going for long, frequent walks, preparing your meals and counting calories for a short period of time or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. (That last suggestion isn’t meant to sound flippant or facetious. It is my attempt to encourage a more active outlook in one’s daily routine and we often miss these opportunities in order to get somewhere quicker or for convenience.)
So when we break it all down into these different training techniques, ways of moving and positive lifestyle changes we get the bigger picture. One which promotes weight management. And as long as these can be incorporated there will be success in one’s fitness journey.
But it all starts with a spark or a thought that leads us onto actually adopting these positive things into our lives. And if you have read this article up to now, I am assuming that you have already begun the thought process.
Indian philanthropist and businessman Pankaj Patel once said,”It is the sum of the parts that make up the whole. So excellence comes from how one undertakes to do something. It all begins with the thought process which is creative and exalted to produce something out of the ordinary.”
To make up the whole, it is said, you need all the little components to complete it. The thought process, or the planning, is a vital component.
In regards to a weight management journey, the whole needs planning, but this planning must include all the factors that I have spoken about. Frequent walks are just as important as making It into the gym. Why? Because it is an important part of the sum that creates the whole. Many people have found their motivation, inspiration, their plans, their passions and indeed themselves on a long walk. It cannot be underestimated. It’s also a great exercise.
There are no magical processes that can guarantee weight management (whatever you want to manage it to be). But there are a number of methods that, when put together, can give you the best opportunities. Many of them I’ve listed above.
I will often give my clients a little bit of homework. I ask them to write down four or five ways in which they can achieve their realistic body weight target. And when they have actually thought about it, they come back to me with the answers I have listed above. This is because we are not reinventing the wheel here, as many influencers would have you believe, we are simply adding simple methods to your life and tweaking things that need a bit of change.
It is the sum of the parts that you already have at your disposal. And when you use them correctly, you begin to have access to the whole.
Shay is a personal trainer, CBT therapist, meditation guide and owner of Pinheiros Tranquilos Bem Estar in central Portugal.
Nature had an idea when it decided that it should prepare me for getting older. It made me start receding at 18. Even younger maybe. In fact my jesting mind allows my memory to believe that I looked like Phil Mitchell as a 3 year old.
Nature prepared me well. I became not at all bothered about losing my hair. I embraced it. On a practical level I have saved thousands of pounds on the barbers and my short morning grooming routine meant I had more time for a cuppa and a couple of ciggies while watching Big Breakfast before running for the bus to get to work.
So, at 45 I am now totally accepting of the ageing process. The morning groom has changed and, in a cruel twist laid on by nature, I do have to deal with hair now. It’s just that this hair grows from my nostrils and out of my ears. I first realised that these hairs were noticeable to others when I got a nose hair strimmer for father’s day a few years ago. It made a change from socks, I suppose.
Today our stuff arrived on pallets from the UK. Luckily the builders were on hand to help lift everything off of the lorry with us. One of them, Thiago, commented on all of the gym equipment. I replied that I am a Personal Trainer and I aim to continue here in Portugal.
“Ah ha!” He exclaimed as he looked me up and down. “I thought you looked good.”
My face made that weird look that it always does when I’ve been complimented but trying to play it down as I also sucked my belly in a bit more (the fresh bread is too nice here) before he went on to continue his comment…
“…for your age.”
For my age. What does that even mean? Do I look good or not?!! He doesn’t know my age!
If he thinks I’m 65 then I probably do look pretty good for my age.
Another thing came in the pallets today. A mirror. I’ve enjoyed not having a mirror in the house. I even had to use my phone camera to look at when it came to shaving my follically challenged head. Other than that I’ve not felt the need to check myself out all that much. I was looking at myself in the reflection of a cafe the other day to find a couple weirded out by some bald bloke giving them a blue steel look. But now I have a full length mirror in the bathroom and my gym stuff I’m sure to be doing the thorax pose daily like I’m an extra on Pumping Iron.
I haven’t lifted anything heavy for months now and I can feel that my body is ready to take on a deadlift or two. Despite all the wonderful bread that keeps finding its way into my mouth I have been sticking to a nutrition plan of sorts. Decades of calorie counting has ensured that I don’t need to sit and work out what every meal adds up to as I can calculate it in my head simply enough and I know I stay within my weight maintenance limits. It means that the jeans I packed last October and arrived today still fit me.
But my joints and muscles have suffered. They’ve not been working as they’re used to. My gym equipment couldn’t come soon enough.
And it won’t be long until some unwitting couple sat by a cafe window will see me strut towards them, pouting and flexing, and say “He looks good….for his age.”
Someone call the fire brigade, this guy is hot! (For his age)
After some problems in getting our Fire stick to work on the TV, I found that I could clear the cache of each application and it worked much faster.
Cache. What exactly is it?!
Well, in computing terms, it is a temporary data storage location that automatically stores data to reduce retrieval time.
And there I found a connection. Not only could it be used in computing terms, but in my own head.
You see, the data that is stored is not necessarily all useful information. Just like on my Fire stick, it can cause broken links and a lack of proper formatting, causing my browsing and viewing experience to be slow and glitchy.
Over the past few weeks my head has been gathering a lot of data, similar to the fire stick, and it needed a clear out.
This brain cache will be back, I’m sure, but without regular clear outs it will become more difficult to function and keep a focussed mind. I will become glitchy.
Do you feel that you need to clear the cache sometimes? What do you do as your preferred method?
Clearing the brain cache is not a one size fits all answer. My suggestions are to go on a long walk, go to the gym, talk to a friend or partner, sleep or in my case this morning I meditated.
There was no filming today. I had answered all of the builders questions. I took the kids to school. It was raining heavily therefore working on the land was out of the question. So I took two hours away from everything and I meditated.
Sure, I could have found something to do. But that would have been my useless cache data telling me to descale the toilet or iron my undies. No, I thought, I need some time to clear my head.
Today has gone a little smoother. Or, at least, dealt with much better now that I am thinking clearer, so it seems to have worked.
Let me know how you like to clear your brain cache. There are no wrong answers. Just the right ones that work for you.
A few years ago I trained a man who weighed more than he was happy with. And this wasn’t just an aesthetic thing. His doctor had told him that his BMI was high which categorised him as obese.
During his consultation, he gave me an idea of his eating habits. Along with the convenience and takeaway foods mentioned he also announced that he ‘ate a banana every day, sometimes two.’
He then suggested that maybe he should stop eating bananas in order to cut down the amount of calories he was consuming each day.
Immediately I could identify the problem. He wanted to pass the bananas off as the one food item that was tipping the balance between him gaining weight and losing weight.
A banana has around 100 calories. So potentially he is consuming 200 calories on this tasty, nutritious, vitamin packed fruit. That is 200 calories well spent, but he didn’t want to admit that it was. He wanted to hear that the crisps and chocolate were well spent. He wanted me to tell him that 3 takeaways a week was normal and it’ll ‘save on the washing up’. But he didn’t want me to tell him how many calories are in the five pints of lager he regularly drinks at the pub.
Of course, I told him to keep the bananas. I also told him to keep some of the food that wasn’t so nutritious. After all, takeaway foods aren’t the whole problem here, it’s the amount of takeaways.
But I knew that I had to work on his attitude surrounding food much more than I had to work on his training program. He was a good trainee. In fact he has been one of the most hardworking trainees I have trained in my ten years as a PT. He was always on time. He learnt good form quickly and he would spend extra time in the gym and go for long walks on rest days.
But the bananas had left his diet. In fact most fruit had. There’s this misconception that fruit sugars are bad for us. Fruit is indeed high in natural sugar, but this enters the bloodstream at a much slower pace than refined sugar. That is why we get a sugar spike from a sweet treat and it can often be an overload on the body.
My client had targeted the banana as the problem. This is absolutely normal and very common.
It seems to be human nature to blame the one thing that is easy to get rid of rather than tackle the bigger issue.
When I lived in Scarborough there was a news report that said that the council had identified seagulls pooing in the sea as the major reason for the sea pollution in South bay. The pollution meant that the beach did not receive its blue flag award.
So if it was the seagulls causing the pollution then the public no longer had to be concerned about the chip factory that had been discharging starchy waste into the sea for the past 50 years.
Those damn seagulls. Flying around their natural habitat. Pooing.
But I understand the problem for the council. This factory is a major employer to the local community. It is important to have a thriving industry in the area.
The culling of seagulls is easier to address. We all want to believe that this will solve the pollution problem.
I have had a recent issue in not being able to come to terms with a problem. Having just bought a trendy coffee machine where I put a capsule in and out comes a silky smooth coffee I began to drink more caffeine. These capsules had an ‘intensity’ of ten which, by all accounts, is strong! I quickly became addicted to drinking this deliciously intense coffee.
By midday I was bouncing about my apartment like Michael Gove at a rave.
But recently I have been getting pretty bad headaches. At first I blamed the atmospheric pressure, then my sleeping pattern, my contact lenses, the sun, my aftershave.
I briefly considered it to be the coffee intake but I shrugged it off and brewed myself another shot of espresso. That is until Lou sat me down and had to break the news to me.
She believed it to be the coffee and told me to halve my coffee consumption and see how I feel. Of course, she was correct. I just didn’t want her to be.
The daily banana is in no way to blame for obesity. The seagull crapping in the sea isn’t to blame for not receiving a blue flag beach. And a few splashes of brut behind my ear is not the cause of my headaches.
In each case, something that we want and feel that we need is a much more contributing factor. And you can bet that in every similar scenario there is a resolution and a compromise. We don’t need to give up something that we enjoy completely.
After three years of working with me, my client changed his weight, his attitude to food and his whole life. And we did it all whilst allowing the birds to crap in the sea.
I like Christmas. Well, I don’t mind it. The enthusiasm has come back a bit since becoming a dad. But every year when December hits and I hear the first dulcet tones of another festive Bublé effort, I strap myself in for the month ahead and hope I don’t lose my mind.
The week between Christmas and the new year hits me the hardest. It doesn’t even have a name. It’s just known as ‘the week between Christmas and New year.’
“Oh, Shay, when shall we have a catch up?”
“I dunno, should I just contact you the week between Christmas and New year?”
It’s like purgatory.
The day after boxing day is when we restock the alcohol, which is incredible really, seeing as we seem to buy the whole stock of a Wetherspoons pub on Christmas eve. This is a Christmas eve tradition as we always believe that the supermarkets are closed forever after Christmas eve when, in fact, they reopen on boxing day.
I need a stiff drink to get over another play of ‘Santa Baby’, so leading up to Christmas is when I start to drink stuff that I wouldn’t think of drinking at any other time of year. Brandy and Irish cream goes in my coffee. Whisky and dry. Jack Daniels. Snowball. I mean, WTF even is that?!
The week between Christmas and new year takes a similar path. We also discovered that many of the locals in rural Portugal have basements dedicated to brewing their own wine. So by the time Antonio had given me his last drop of rocket fuel on new year’s day I was ready to have some time away from alcohol.
A week has passed and I am still in no way ready to drink anything alcoholic.
But there is usually a strange excuse for me to have a little tipple. A birthday, a weekend, a birth or the sunshine. And I sometimes commiserate with a drink too. All it takes is for a soppy movie about a dying dog and out comes the crate of Sagres.
But, for now, it is a dry January. After all, I’m making up for a very wet December.
A bit of a whirlwind day today. This morning, unexpectedly, we were told that we could have the keys to our new property in Portugal!
The deal is to be finalised by the end of January but the current owners have kindly allowed us to have the keys to be able to begin making it our own.
And there’s no doubt, this will be a long process. We’ve been there today and it’s been tiring, so I’m a bit too knackered now to describe the work we need to do on the property but I did take a few pictures so I can put some bullet points attached to let you get an idea of what will be our home and our new wellbeing centre at Pinheiros Tranquilos.
As you approach the property you are met by sprawling fields. This particular piece of land will be used by us, mainly for the boys to be able to play sports.A part of the property, beyond the field is forests of pine trees which will be ideal for several meditation sites and future glamping projects.Back towards the buildings there are two houses with habitation licences. This enables us to live in one, which is already habitable, and the smaller building which will need renovation to become a rental accommodation.The back of the rental accommodation shows some of the work needed to be carried out. The road nearby is very quiet and is mainly used by visitors to Trizio River beach and agricultural vehicles.The patio area and the largest outbuilding will become the massage treatment room and also there’s potential for a bar and shop as a future project. Seating will be provided and also group exercise sessions can be done from here.The smaller outbuilding is where my personal training equipment will be kept. It is possible to train inside as it will be equipped with weights, bench, pulleys and cables but I also imagine that much of the training will be done outdoors.There are many fruit trees on the property to be picked at your leisure.
We went at around 6pm and it is late December so it doesn’t look as bright and sunny as we have seen it previously! Plus it’s all a bit untidy and overgrown after being left for a couple of months. But the hard work starts now regarding our new home and business. I’ll keep you updated on how we get on, plus our experiences on filming A New Life In The Sun!
Since Jonas was five he has played football for Scarborough Athletic. He was only able to train with the under 7’s team as he was too young, but once the new season started, he was able to play official matches.
Now ten, he has a new challenge coming up. Soon he will begin training with his new team, Sertanense, a club based in Sertá, central Portugal, ready for the new season in September.
Both Jonas and his younger brother Finlay will be starting a new school in Portugal in the new year and this is the biggest challenge of all seeing as it will include learning a new language (it is a local school and not an international school). It also means that they’ll not be with us every hour of every day which has been the case for the past few months as we made the permanent move.
Things are happening quickly for them. Lou and I don’t know how they will react on the morning of the 3rd of January when we take them to their new school. So far, when we talk about it, the signs are good. But to them it’s still Christmas. January might seem a distance yet. In reality it is a week today as I write this.
Finlay seems to want to take up a martial art as his extra curricular activity. He plays football, but it seems a bit more forced because he just joins in what Jonas is doing. But he doesn’t seem to have that passion for it. He doesn’t like watching it, whereas Jonas will analyse a period of play and talk about positioning during a game on TV. I’ve had play fights with Finlay. I think Karate or Judo will be a good choice for him. He’ll be a black belt in no time.
I’m trying not to transfer my fears onto the boys. What I mean by that is maybe I’m more scared than they are. They might just walk into school without any issues. Jonas might run onto the training pitch with 20 other kids with no problems. Maybe it’s me who has the nerves.
I hated new beginnings. The start of a new school term and definitely a new school still makes me shudder. And I never really pursued any extra curricular stuff as a kid because it meant meeting new people. I just stayed in the safe zone as much as possible.
But there’s a little bit of our move which is exactly for this purpose. We wanted to take ourselves and our kids out of the safe zone. A couple of years ago I never expected to be speaking Portuguese to a postal worker in a sorting office with no knowledge of English about my missing post. But I did that today. It’s a little achievement, but a massive confidence boost that he actually understood me.
I’ve been driving along cliff edges on an unfamiliar side of the road in rural Portugal. We bought an old farm house that we intend to make into a well being centre and guest house. Individually, each one of us has a zone which becomes out of their comfort. Mine might not seem like much to some people, but I’m enjoying finding my zone and continuing to challenge it.
And that’s the ultimate goal for my kids. That they can feel the discomfort in walking into a new class room, karate group or football pitch, thrive and grow from it and enjoy their achievements. Overcoming new and different experiences can make us more rounded, happier people.
I always told my new clients this whenever they felt like entering the gym became too much for them. Gyms can be an intimidating place. That’s why just stepping into the gym as a new member is the first goal. Not a deadlift or 20 minute treadmill run, but just entering the gym. From then on, with consistency, each visit gets easier to do.
Perhaps you have a new challenge that you want to focus on in the new year? My advice is to take that first step. It might mean leaving your comfort zone, but it’ll feel all the more sweeter when you overcome it.
I’ll keep you informed on mine and my family’s achievements in the coming weeks. Be sure to tell me yours.
Never Give Up PT 