health – Page 3 – Never Give Up PT

The 20%

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

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

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

Enter The 20%

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

“I’ve quit smoking…

I’ve cut down on alcohol…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bottom Line

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

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

And She Stopped…

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

Poet Becky Hemsley wrote…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sea Needs To be Sailed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A wooden bench, a bar and two breeze blocks

A bar lodged between two branches for pull ups

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

The weight rack AKA the detergent bottles filled with sand

Eat The Frog First To Overcome Daily Lethargy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palhais

Along with my new resistance training which I’m now completing each morning, as a family we are beginning to explore our local area of Palhais in Sertá. And as I don’t have the use of a full time car, walking long distances has been a daily activity.

We happen to be almost in the very centre of Portugal. So much so that in the distance of our accommodation we can see the Centro Geodésico de Portugal, which is a tall white tower signalling the geographical centre of Portugal in Vila de Rei which offers fantastic panoramic views. But this region also has its challenges.

Buses are irregular and, if you do drive, the long and winding road through the mountainous route from Palhais to Cernache do Bonjardim is not for the faint hearted. And for those who are walking from place to place, kerbs aren’t really a thing here.

And that’s what we’re doing for the most part, doing lots of walking.

But luckily, whether we are on foot or in a car, we rarely see many cars on the road which suits my left hand lane driving brain.

In the town of Sertá, there are lots of things to see and do even on a drizzly (yet warmish) November day. Of course, the boys found a football pitch to have a kick about.

And then there’s Trizio, which is a wonderful river beach offering water sports during the summer periods. For now though, we got to see its beauty without any people there. When our youngest, Finlay, managed to stop talking for a second, we could hear just the silence of our surroundings. Bliss.

There are those days where we don’t feel like leaving our accommodation at all. It has a pool, which is freezing, but that didn’t stop Finlay from having a dip!

We know that what is around the corner for us in our lives will be a challenge. But it’s one that we signed up for. Tomorrow we will be looking at another house that has the potential to be our permanent home and business. It won’t be the finished product and we will have to put all of our resources into it, as well as ensuring that the kids’ wellbeing and schooling needs are met. So far, we have been able to explore our surroundings at our leisure. But we await the next chapter and we hope it will be in Palhais.

And we don’t expect a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but we are hoping for a fulfilling, grounding and loving one.

Smoke And Mirrors

In light of the UK government’s recent announcement that they want to phase out the selling of cigarettes I thought that it would be remiss of me, as a fitness and wellbeing coach, to avoid the subject.

The problem is that when I proceed in talking about the UK’s current government on various platforms I can sense the ‘ban button’ being pressed.

However, I’m a fitness coach about to talk about smoking. I’m going to wholeheartedly agree with the government, right?

Well, no. In fact I find it a blatant attempt to gain votes in the next general election. The conservative government heavily relies on the older generation’s votes. And seeing as the over 65’s only make up around 8% of the smoking population it is bound to be a credible announcement to many of its potential voters. Especially when we are given the statistics on health related issues due to cigarette smoking and the burden this has on the National Health Service.

But hang on. Where do we draw the line here? According to NHS England the cost of smoking related costs to the NHS is £2.5 billion a year. Yet alcohol related illness costs £3.5 billion a year. And according to gov.uk, obesity costs the NHS a whopping £6.5 billion a year.

I think that we would all agree, these are serious issues in most western countries. Smoking, heavy drinking and obesity can contribute to ill health and therefore become a burden on the NHS in the UK.

As a fitness coach and as a father to two young boys, I would very much like smoking to be banned.

But as a realist I am going to aim for something different. I realise that there is a chance that my kids will try a ciggie with their mates and they probably drink alcohol before legal age. I don’t want them to, but if I manage the probabilities and potential outcomes then I think that I can navigate their moments of being pressured by their peers into exactly that, a kid trying to ‘fit in’ with their mates.

And when I consider all of the other stuff that kids can do to show off then trying a cigarette is the least of my concerns. Sex, class A drugs, bullying, dares along a rail track.

Blimey. If they just manage to throw a whity after trying a B&H then I’ll relieved!

I stopped smoking when I found out that Lou was pregnant with Jonas, so ten years ago. I regret smoking now and often think of the damage that I might have caused and how much money it will have cost. But I also remember sharing a cig with a friend who had just lost their dad. I remember the Cuban cigar on honeymoon as Lou and I lay on the Carribbean sand together. I remember making a few rollies for my bricky mates as we shared a banter over a lunch break. And I remember talking to total strangers in the rain outside a nightclub as we huddled together to try to stay dry before going back inside.

Now, I’m not condoning smoking, but I’m not going to condemn it either.

I grew up at a time when smoking was not just legal, but very much widely accepted. The adverts on TV, the daily newspapers and the magazines were ones which told us that smoking would give us a better social standing, greater health and a better life.

Although we now know this to be untrue, for those who have smoked cigarettes in the past we can perhaps see the benefits at the time. Whether to calm our nerves, to enjoy a moment with a cig and a cuppa, or as a social norm.

And if the media and the companies with their billions of pounds advertising campaigns are telling us that it is something that we should be doing, then it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that the pleasures of smoking cigarettes has been worming into our behaviour for centuries.

Indeed, the first cigarette ad campaign was in 1789 in America. How, then, are we supposed to just ban something that is so ingrained into our western society?

During PT consultations, clients would sometimes sheepishly tell me that they smoked. People seem to see me as a preacher for all things healthy. I’m really not. Like I say, I’m a realist. Rather than vilify them and tell them that they should quit, I ask them what steps THEY want to make to feel fitter, happier, healthier. Pizzas aren’t banned, wine isn’t banned, smoking isn’t banned. Not on my shift. My clients will make their own judgements on what they need to do in their own time.

If I were to start banning things from their life, they would do what many of us would do. Rebel. Us humans hate to be told what to do. We like to realise it for ourselves.

The bottom line is this…

I don’t think that banning cigarettes will make us or our children happier or healthier. I agree that certain products that we can legally buy should come with advisories, but allow us to make our own choices free of manipulating ad campaigns and I am confident that we can make good choices.

And if the parties that we vote for can be honest, then perhaps we can make better choices on voting day.

Sycamore Tree

Sometimes, I feel like a tree.

I can stand tall and firm during stormy weathers, despite my leaves and branches looking a little dishevelled from the whole experience.

I am frequently visited and loved by many, I know. But I can feel lonely and vulnerable too.

People come and talk to me and ask me stuff. Yes me! A tree! I try to give good advice. I have, after all, some years of experience at living life.

I am beautiful.

They can kick me. They can cut me down. They can destroy me.

But I am not the problem. They are.

And for all their destruction, my energy will continue to give the people who I love and who love me the strength that they need to carry on.

Sometimes, I feel like a tree. But I’m not. I am so grateful to share this planet with a tree because I’m not worthy.

I am beautiful. But I’m not a tree.

The Squirrel At Shuttleworth Garden

It’s a beautiful September morning in Scarborough, England today. The sun is shining, the air is crisp and the sea gently glistens. For all my needs to leave for Portugal, I can’t imagine a better setting for what could be my last ever personal training session in the UK.

The park at Shuttleworth garden once again provides a wonderful outdoor gym. The views are spectacular of the sea and the castle in the distance. The animals came to observe what I was doing too. One squirrel in particular seemed very interested in my kettlebell.

This park is special to me. Once lockdown restrictions were relaxed and exercise in parks were permitted, this was one of the parks I would use. The lady who I trained today is special too as I trained her throughout 2020 and has been a weekly trainee with me for over four years now. So her dedication has been fantastic. Next week, if the weather is as lovely as today and I have the time in-between packing etc, I’d like to think we could get one more session in at Shuttleworth garden.

I like to live in the moment so I often forget to take pictures. I also didn’t want any unnecessary movements to scare the squirrel away, but I think I captured the moment that the squirrel scurried over to see what I was doing as I set up my equipment.

Maybe he wanted to join in, but that would be nuts.

I Just Find It Really Difficult To Clear My Mind

After a recent conversation with a client I recommended meditation as an option to relieve her of the anxiety that she currently has.

She replied, as so many people do, that she finds it difficult to clear her mind to be able to meditate.

This is just one of the misconceptions about meditation and I feel that more people might be open to trying it if they understood that it isn’t about clearing the mind.

Our mind has often been described as a chimp that won’t stop jumping around, chattering and sometimes being a little mischievous. It won’t stay still. This is your ‘monkey mind’.

Your monkey mind won’t go away, but you can retrain it.

I meditate using lots of different methods but a trusted way of doing this is by using a guide. Lots of guides are available on YouTube, with Jason Stephenson being my particular favourite. Because the guide gives you direction during meditation, they are helping you to retrain your pesky, fidgety chimp, not get rid of it.

And of course, even with a quiet moment to yourself, soothing music or a meditation guide, the chances of thinking about what’s for the kid’s tea is pretty high! That’s totally normal.

Change the word ‘meditation’ to ‘think’. It might help you in your approach to your ‘thinking’ time.

Try thinking about you in 6 months, a year, 5 years and beyond. Think about your family and friends and your aspirations. Think about the dream holiday, house or job. Think about yours and your loved ones health.

Of course, you might still hear the clatter of the monkey in your head distracting your thoughts. It might even take you to events from your past and moments you prefer to forget. The more you try to escape your monkey, the more you become angry at it. Instead, stand tall, smile at it and, over time, even make peace with your monkey. Befriend it.

Meditation doesn’t have to be an over elaborate ritual with candles. It can be just sitting and lying down with a cuppa. Thinking positive thoughts. You’ll never clear your mind, but you can retrain it.

Mr Bean Volume 4 And The Portuguese Consulate

The empty Mr Bean DVD box has been hanging around the house for years. And when we do find the disc, we can’t find the box to put it in. This has been happening since 2020. I only know that because a lot of things got stored in unusual places during several DIY projects in the first lockdown. Things that were scattered about wherever the kids like to hang out were pretty much scooped up and put into random cupboards and drawers. Just the other day a plastic piece of joke poo jumped out at me as I opened the kid’s wardrobe. At least, they tell me it was plastic poo.

But during a time when I have loads to do in preparing for a move to Portugal, including packing stuff we actually need, booking consulate appointments, liaising with the solicitor to set up our business and work appointments, searching for a Mr Bean DVD was not a priority. It certainly didn’t warrant 2 hours of my time!

I think I’ve figured out the problem with me here. I’m overthinking the process. I can’t see the wood for the trees. And yet I’ve simplified the process slightly by hiring solicitors to guide us. It’s why we decided to hire them. We were told that we could save money by doing the VISA and business set up ourselves, but we need to get it right otherwise money and time could be lost in the long run.

Just like hiring a car mechanic to service your car, a plumber to check out your dodgy boiler or a personal trainer to program your fitness journey, sometimes it is reassuring to know that a professional has your back.

But our solicitor won’t help me find the Mr Bean DVD. These are the finer details that I’m concerning myself with because I feel overwhelmed by the big stuff. That’s my problem. And I realise that this happens to so many people in regards to their health and fitness. I’ve heard everybody’s ‘Mr Bean Volume 4 DVD’ stories. They can’t find their gym trainers. It’s too warm or too cold. They’ll wait for when their mate can go with them. They can’t afford a membership (despite finding money for alcohol and takeaways) or they’re injured.

Most of the time, they’re just looking for a DVD that has no impact at all on what their actual goals are. They’re not wanting to face the real truths of what has to be done. They want it. More than anything! They want to feel fitter, stronger, happier. But some days it is difficult to find a starting point. Planning is useful. Hiring a PT is great. Booking gym classes helps keep a schedule. But that pesky DVD needs to be found, right?!!!

Well, no, it doesn’t. But at the time it does. At the time it feels like the most important part of the process.

I know what I have to do and I do have the reassurance that, if I am not providing the correct information for the likes of the Portuguese Consulate, I have a solicitor guiding me through it all.

But from time to time, I just need to look for the Mr Bean Volume 4 DVD.