weight loss – Page 2 – Never Give Up PT

Damn Seagulls

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.

Orange Is The New Snack

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. I tend to just work with the moment. If I need to lose a few pounds to fit more comfortably in my jeans then I’ll just either lose a few pounds or I’ll buy a bigger pair of jeans. I’ve learnt to be happy in doing either of those.

But seeing as we’ve recently acquired six orange trees in a part of the world that don’t do takeaway meals, that moment it seems, has arrived.

This evening, as I peeled an orange from our tree, I said to Lou that I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so healthily over the Christmas period. Don’t get me wrong, I do try to stick to some sort of a plan for nutritional reasons at any time of year, but the tubs of celebrations and bowls of salted peanuts and crisps always make an appearance. But either these traditional British Christmas snacks don’t exist in Sertá or they are imported at the expense of the consumer. And I’m not prepared to pay over ten euros for a bag of Nobby’s Nuts.

The oranges are free from the garden.

So after some research I’ve found that the trees dotted about the land are called navel orange trees. With no snacks in the cupboard and no obligatory one or two takeaway meals during the Christmas and new year period, I’ve found myself peeling an orange each evening.

Now, it has to be said, I have always hated oranges. The peel would get under my nails. My fingers would be sticky and would smell. It would squirt in my eye as I wrestled with the peel. The pips would get in the way of any sort of enjoyment of eating an orange.

I have peeled so many oranges in my life. My previous work meant that I peeled at least three a day in residential and day care settings. My kids eat oranges and my life got a little easier with ‘easy peelers’. Thank goodness for easy peelers! It didn’t, however, change my mind on oranges. Messy fuckers.

And then I picked a juicy piece of sun from a tree.

The move to rural Portugal was not by accident. Much of our motivation to choose the Castelo Branco region was its lack of fast food restaurants, pubs and bars and traffic. We wanted to take our family where we could try to live a simpler, healthier lifestyle. The temptation of a Greggs pasty is no longer there for me. The local supermarkets are stocked with their traditionally prepared bacalhau and other varieties of sea food and local fresh produce. Yes, they have junk food too. But I’m beginning to overlook it. I’ll wait and pick an orange when I get home.

I have always told my clients that you will always want to eat what you have available to you. If you buy it and take it home, it will be calling you at 10pm willing you to take it from the cupboard and eat it.

It is often said that a fitness goal begins in the kitchen. I would say it begins in the supermarket. You can’t eat something that you don’t buy in.

And it is extremely difficult, I know. Nobby always wanted me to grab his nuts. But I want a fresh start in making better health choices.

My new love affair with the orange is real. You could say it’s tang-erine-able.

Orange is the new snack.

Remember This Going Into Your New Year…

Wow. Some year huh?!

I hope that this year has been a prosperous one for you. I hope that, whatever you set out to do at the beginning of this year, you have succeeded or are on the right path in reaching it.

But it is important to know that whatever you want to achieve in this coming year, it is done for you. Nobody else.

Sure, you’ll get support from the ones who you can put your trust in. You know the ones. They proved before that they will pick you up when you’re down and go out of their way to help you out.

But then you will come across those who place expectations upon you and sneer at your downfalls or shortcomings. You will never please these people so you don’t even need to concern yourself in trying to. For these people, you just need to limit your time around them. Don’t hate them. Don’t become them.

I came across a quote the other day and it made a lot of sense to me but, forgive me, I’ve tried to find the owner of this quote but I don’t know who it is. Maybe you do? It says…

“No matter how good you are, people will judge you according to their mood and needs.”

Not all people. As I say, you know the ones. But you’ll get a little alarm bell that sounds in your head when you speak to someone who will.

It might be a snigger as you tell them about your fitness goal or a mocking shake of the head as you express yourself about a lost relationship or job opportunity.

You know the face they pull, right? The ‘how did you ever think you could date that person?’ look.

Maybe their needs and mood could be helped by your supportive attention, but it’s not your job. Just make sure that you protect you first of all. You can’t help anybody if you aren’t protecting yourself first of all.

So let’s start thinking about what you want to achieve in 2024. Think big. But remember that some people won’t want you to get there, no matter how good you become at striving for it.

Leaving The Comfort Zone

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.

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.

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.

A Day To Start A New Routine

Since arriving in Portugal I’ve ticked off a few necessary jobs that had to be done. Driving my (potentially) new car yesterday was a nerve-wracking task that I had to get over as I had never driven outside of the UK before. Another ‘biggie’ today will be to view a house that we are looking to buy.

But before that, another essential task will be to begin a fitness routine. Regular readers of my blog will recall me saying that I was prepared to put any regular training regime on hold while I focused fully on moving my family out of the UK.

I had left the gym that I worked and trained from in the summer and my own bits of gym equipment had been gradually palletised over the past few months so access to heavy resistance was difficult. Time was also an issue as I have been putting every ounce of energy into the move every second of each day.

Stopping a daily training program can be dangerous. Excuses can always be found and, whether they may be good enough reasons or not, a plan to begin a training program in the near future must be a priority if we are serious about our fitness goals. My passion for mental and physical health (and aesthetics) has never waned. I’ve kept my calories in check throughout so that I haven’t spiralled too much. I’ve been desperate to begin training again. But other than a calisthenics routine, I have felt restricted.

Now, just to be clear. Calisthenics is a great way to train. This is by exercising using bodyweight only. So push ups, press ups, squats, Burpees etc are good examples. But it has never excited me in the same way as resistance training. And I like to feel excited by a new challenge such as a different weight or a new piece of gym kit.

Oh, and talking of new bits of gym kit, I decided to start my daily routine again by lifting breeze blocks and bottles filled with sand!

I do appreciate an unconventional method. I sometimes feel that the polished arrangement of a commercial gym can be off putting. Lifting heavy stuff in a Portuguese field with the view of the mountains, however, is something that can’t be bought with a gym membership. I just had to take advantage. Today was a day to start a new routine.

And I have little excuse not to. For a short time now this land and its gym is what I call home. Until we can find our new permanent home and create our new business, this is my life. I have energy and lots of thinking and meditating time in abundance. Sure the kids will keep me busy, and home schooling will be important to us until we find a permanent school. But that’s all part of finding this new routine.

I just know that my workouts will become an important part of it.

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.

In That Moment

I wonder if any of my readers might know the author of this quote…

“It is better to have done something imperfectly than done nothing flawlessly.”

I like it. And in my attempts to find the author I came across another quote not dissimilar by John Steinbeck…

“And now you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

What is wrong with imperfections? What is wrong with good? Or sometimes even adequate?

Blimey! If I could leave the gym feeling that I had done an adequate workout for most of my visits then I would have been making excellent progress!

But perfection? Even if I attempted to aim for that then I know that I would be disappointed. Disappointment leaves us demoralised. Being demoralised means that we give up. When we give up, we achieve nothing.

I have begun to embrace my imperfections. Maybe it’s an age thing, I dunno. I aim to do a ‘good’ job at everything I do. I have sometimes got anxious about not getting it spot on and it leaves me feeling rubbish. Inadequate. But when I aim for ‘good’, there’s a weight of responsibility lifted from my shoulders. It’s almost as if I can just begin to enjoy the task in hand rather than pretend to be super human.

I do my best at that moment in time.

And this helps me to understand other people’s efforts too. I used to get frustrated when my son could play a ‘player of the match’ performance one week and the next he didn’t turn up. This, as I now realise, can be for a whole number of reasons. Just like a client in a training session. We will not always achieve a personal best, a player of the match performance, score a worldy or be at our optimum 24/7. We are not robots.

But what I appreciate about my kids, employees, clients and of myself is that we just turn up and give it a go. To do our best in that moment.

Sometimes we feel like crap, right? We’re not always on tip top form. But it would be better to have done something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.

Have a think about that the next time you’ve got a job or a task that you face. Just do it and do your best

That

Moment

Don’t Just Believe Me! Do Your Research!

Early on in my Personal Training career I decided to stop certain weight loss claims to grab a potential client’s attention.

Things like ‘lose a guaranteed 5 pounds a week on my new weight loss plan!’ seemed tacky and tabloid. It’s also misleading.

I also felt that the magic pills and fad diet ads that cluttered my social media feed were damaging to our health and fitness goals. But if they make money from you, they will sell it. They will claim any benefit they can in order for you to buy that product. The regulations on such claims are virtually none existent.

Social media allows us as individuals and the companies that are selling a service, to say whatever we like. Ok. We might be fact checked or receive a three day ban for going against certain guidelines, but how many people are we able to reach before it is flagged as inappropriate or false information?

And giving out falsehoods can be profitable if your face fits. A TOWIE turned influencer can successfully promote the latest diet fad. An extra from Home Alone can encourage an attack on the US Capitol. Heck! Even Katie Hopkins and Billie Piper’s ex can get the British voting public to leave the EU and destroy the economy. All by using buzzwords, soundbites and propaganda.

It has happened long before social media of course. The written press has lied to not only sell questionable products, but fund German fascist regimes ( 1933,The Mail, Lord Rothermere) and criminalise the victims of a football stadium disaster (1988, Rupert Murdoch, The Sun).

And here’s a story that proves the lack of investigative journalism in the UK for the sake of a headline. A story was put out about an England football fan who was so worried about the risk of England failing in the 2006 World Cup that he had paid £100 to insure himself against emotional trauma. The story continued that, if he could provide medical evidence that he had suffered trauma, he would receive a payout of £1 million by a particular online insurance company.

UK tabloids ran with this story, of course, but it didn’t stop there. The Guardian newspaper and the Telegraph too! It even made TV and radio news from no other than ITV, Sky and the BBC. Yes! The BBC! So it must be true, right.

No.

With a quick Google check it was discovered that this guy had been involved in insurance stories before using the same company. One involving insurance on his mortgage and, remarkably, he was the same England football fan who had insured his mental well-being at the previous World Cup in Japan in 2002.

As it turned out, this guy was a marketing director who specialised in promoting web based companies. He had successfully promoted the online insurance company whilst proving that the media, including the UK’s national broadcaster, were lazy in their attempts to bring us factual news.

The health and fitness industry relies heavily on the media running these kinds of remarkable stories in order to get the word out that their product really works!

‘Gemma lost 6 stone by drinking apple cider vinegar!’

‘Bryan gained a six pack by eating fish and chips every day!’

‘Gaynor looks drop dead gorgeous in figure hugging dress after this six week nutrition plan!’

And even I’m a part of that. I appreciate you reading my articles, I really do, but don’t just take my word for it! If there’s something that resonates with you in a health and fitness blog then do a bit of research and find out if it is right for you. Are there any other experts out there that are backing up what I’m saying?

The bottom line is that you have to do your own research when it comes to stuff that you read and hear. You’ll get to know credible sources. You’ll be more confident getting your information from certain people or publications. Ask people that you trust in your own life. Once you have gathered the evidence then you can make more informed choices. And if it is anything to do with your health and wellbeing, then being armed with informed choices is super important to you.