First.
Today is Remembrance Day; a time to remember all those who gave up their lives fighting for our individual freedom since World War One.
Jen and I are just two of the many people that recently visited the Tower of London poppy display to pay our respects.
We Will Remember Them.
Here’s the latest edition of my regular series of Quick and Easy Health, Physique Transformation and Sports Conditioning tips.
You can put these into action right now to Look, Feel, Move and Perform better.
These tips are organised into 3 different categories:
- General Health & Motivation
- Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)
- Nutrition
Enjoy!
General Health & Motivation
‘Taste the fish before you learn how to fish’
I’m sure many of you have heard the proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
In the context of physique transformation or sports conditioning programs, this means that many people would benefit from learning to write their own programs.
However, it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you haven’t already done many programs to get a feel for how a session should flow, what exercises should be included, how you respond to fluctuating training stress, and loads of other factors.
So, it’s not a bad idea to taste the fish (try some programs, or have one designed for you) before you run out to buy a fishing rod and bait, then spend all day knee-deep in water (attempting to write your own program).
Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)
‘Modify total work as a fat loss diet progresses’
You will be more successful with your fat loss dieting when you understand this concept: the harder you train, the hungrier you get.
The most important thing in losing fat is, has been, and will continue to be your nutrition.
Your strength training program should be the priority in training when dieting. You want to maintain as much lean mass as possible (because lean muscle mass is metabolically active), and what made the muscle (resistance training) is what’s going to keep it on you. However, you can’t just continue to strength train, add more conditioning, and eat less. It just doesn’t add up. Either you’re going to fail on the diet or get really weak.
Neither of those are cool.
So what’s the solution?
Lower the volume of ‘work’ you do as you lower the calories. Whether that comes in the way of shorter strength training workouts (focus on the main sets of big lifts and keep the accessory work limited), or you do less conditioning, do less somewhere.
‘Metabolic resistance training’ is a trendy term in fat loss circles, but in reality, all training has a metabolic effect (of course, some types more than others). For fat loss, your diet needs to come first, and these tweaks to your program are just better management of total work done to match your nutrition.
Base your training around your diet, and as you eat less, do less. Pretty simple.
Nutrition
‘Make food taste better…by adding more food’
Chicken, turkey and pork all taste great when you eat them right out of the oven or off the grill.
However, everyone knows that ‘dry as a bone’ sensation you can get when you eat them as leftovers. To get around this, try chopping the meat up and adding it to an omelette; it tastes great!
This is just one example of how you can ‘disguise’ something healthy that might not taste so good.
Don’t like spinach? Blend it into your shakes. Not a fan of tomatoes? Grind them up and add some spices and fruit to make a salsa. Your imagination is the only limit.
My personal favourite?
Blending offal, like liver, into bolognese or chilli.
Give it a try – you won’t notice the taste one bit – it’s an easy and delicious way to incorporate a tremendously healthy and affordable source of protein, vitamins and minerals into foods you enjoy.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the latest edition of my regular series and found it useful.
Thanks for reading and please do share with anyone else you know will benefit!
Feel free to post some of your own ideas in the comments section below and on RHP’s Facebook or Twitter pages, too!
Rich
P.S. – to access every installment of my regular ‘Quick and Easy Ways to Look, Feel & Perform Better’ series, click here.
Leave a reply