Diet, Stress and Mood

Here's a little tip for everyone who is busy and/or stressed - keep eating well! Many times when everything is going well it is easy to eat well, but once time gets short and stress levels increase it's very tempting to turn to the junk food for convenience. The problem with this is what you eat can effect not only your body composition (amounts of muscle and fat), but also your mood, energy levels, sleep and basically your whole life!

The times when stress is high, time and sleep are short are exactly when your body most needs good food packed with nutrients in order to cope - if you turn to the junk food at this time you may end up in a downward spiral of sugar spikes, cravings, mood swings, weight gain and poor health! Therefore next time your life gets busy, prioritize good eating and you will find you can cope with what life throws at you much better!

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You Are What You Eat!

By Alex Gold

I do a lot of good stuff when training people. I get them stronger, get them in better shape, fix postural problems, cure little niggling aches and pains and much more. But when it comes to body composition/fat loss results, most of the results are out of my hands. The training certainly gives you the gun and even loads it for you, but you have to hit the target yourself!

Why You Must Eat Right

You have heard the phrase, “You are what you eat” before, I am sure. The fact that is undeniable is that if you eating more calories than you require, you will be putting on weight. The correlation tends to be that bad food is more calorie dense than good food, so ‘eat bad – look bad’. No matter how hard you train you cannot train around a bad diet. Yes, you will get stronger. Yes, you will get fitter. You may even gain some muscle (those extra calories don’t have to be stored as fat), but it will be highly unlikely that you will lose fat.

Sometimes it is hard to get good food in – you have a busy week at work and find yourself grabbing food on the go, trying to make ‘good’ choices from what is available, but generally not eating in a way that is going to change your body for the better. This is understandable, and occurs all too frequently in today’s on-the-go society. However, ‘understandable’ does not mean ‘excusable’. Sometimes, if you wish to achieve the results you deserve, you will have to put a little work in.

Fail To Prepare, Prepare To Fail

There are a few little things that can help your chances of staying on track so much easier. If you have to decide when you are hungry what you will eat next, you have very little chance of succeeding long-term, no matter how good your intentions are. Therefore, you can do some or all of these tips to save time during busy times:

 Chop large quantities of vegetables at once, store in containers
 Pre-cook meats (chicken breast etc.)
 Make batches of stir-fry and chili to reheat when needed
 Buy a cool bag and carry food with you where possible
 Find healthy meals you can eat in restaurants
 Find ‘emergency’ solutions
 Ensure you have good food in the fridge when possible

By simply doing these little things, some of which require a little one-off research (what food can I have in Subway?) and some that you may have to do on a bi-weekly basis (chopping vegetables, cooking meat), you can take a lot of the pressure off when it comes to eating time. Rather than spending ten minutes every time you plan to eat preparing, it can be done in one go, saving huge amounts of time later.

This little tip is one of the most important variables for me between success and failure. When I am carrying healthy food with me, I no longer have the choice of, “what shall I eat next?” every time I feel hungry. In fact, if I make a bad choice, it will be even more highlighted by the fact I will come home still carrying healthy food. In this way, it is more effort to not eat well, which is exactly the kind of situation that will lead to success in the long term.

Junk Food In The House? Why?!?

This is a copy and paste of a post from Ryan Andrews, who is a professional dietician on the Precision Nutrition forums.

Here is a sample of a conversation that usually comes up with new clients on a weekly, if not daily basis:

Client - “Ryan, I ate some unhealthy foods last week and it is preventing me from reaching my health and body composition goals.”

Me - “Tell me why you chose the unhealthy foods.”

Client – “Well, I had this pack of cookies and bag of chips in my house and…..”

Me – “Wait a minute, why did you have chips and cookies at your house? Remember how we discussed the importance of building a safe home base and surrounding yourself with healthy, whole foods? Foods you actually plan on consuming.”

Client – “But Ryan, I have two kids and a spouse. They can eat those foods. I have to keep those foods in the house for them.”

This is about the time in the conversation where I have to slow my breathing and count to 10 or else my face turns red and I throw my computer monitor across the room.

People, listen. No matter if you are fat, thin, healthy, unhealthy, smart or stupid – no one should be consuming unhealthy junk foods. Period. End of discussion.

If unhealthy junk foods are “all your kids will eat,” then drop them off in Uganda for 2 months and see what happens. Kids will eat if they are hungry. Haven’t had anything to eat for a couple days? A root vegetable looks pretty darn good.


If your husband “loves his chocolate ice cream,” then tell him to go out and get an individual cup and be done with it. Don’t stock up on a 4 gallon container from Fat-Mart.

Convincing yourself that you need to keep unhealthy junk foods in the house for your fellow family members is a load of bull. That is rationalization rearing its head.

If you eat crappy foods at regular intervals, your health and body comp will be crappy as well.

Junk food is delicious!

Wow, junk food is great! A nice burger and chips, some pizza, fish and chips, mars bars, jelly babies....mmmm, lovely!

Or not.

Recently I've noticed that junk food SEEMS nice, but rarely is! The nice burger and chips becomes, in reality, a soggy lump of sub-standard meat in a bun that falls apart with a sauce of dubious origin. The pizza becomes either a floppy mess or overcooked (or if you're particullarly lucky, both). The fish and chips is horrible, batter so fatty you can see the years coming off your life as you eat it and half-cooked oily chips that normally resemble wilting celery. Sweets look good until you eat them, then are normally far too sweet or chewy.

This, however, is a good thing. The more bad experiences I can have on my 'cheat' meals the better, since next time I will probably remember that it wasn't really worth it. I just had a lovely meal of salmon fillets, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, radish and olive oil which was much nicer than any cheat meal I have had recently.

So remember, next time you are thinking of ditching your nutrition plan and going for that tempting junk food, it's probably not worth it in reality. And as Alwyn Cosgrove says, "Nothing tastes as good as lean feels!"

Chili - A burning sort of cool!

Recently I have been really getting into chili, with almost everything I eat being spicy enough to be used as a substitute for rocket fuel! As a side effect, I have been looking into the health benefits of it, and to my surprise, there are MANY great health benefits, including:



- High in vitamins and minerals

- Good for pain relief

- Reduce risk of cancer

- Kill intestinal parasites

- Clear nasal passages

- Control of blood sugar (reduced risk of diabetes)



Therefore, if you do not already, I recommend bringing a bit of spice to your life! There is a level for everyone, from a touch of paprika to extra hot chilli powder, so choose a level that won't blow your head off to start with! I like using fresh green chilies too, anyone that is brave enough can ask me for a sample of my chilli, but you'd better like it hot!



If you are planning on trying out adding some spice to your cooking, I thought it may be prudent to add a link to this page on how to cool chili burns!



http://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Burns-from-Chili-Peppers