• Cut down the sugar in your tea or coffee. From two spoons to one, three times a day could reduce your weekly Kcal by 100
• Have your evening meal on a smaller plate.  This will make your waist line shrink.
• Try not to eat your evening meal after 6.30pm
• Always take the stairs.
• Park further away from the shops.
• Cycle/walk to work.
• Drink green tea.
• Have a small glass of milk before you go to bed.
• Drink plenty of water, always have a bottle of water near by.
• Try eating little and often, six times a day is the optimum.
• Find out about supplements that may help your body.
• Eat more bananas, they are good mood food.
• Always, always, eat breakfast!
• Get Mike Perry to train you twice a week

Five simple steps to weightloss.

1) Understand how many calories you are eating.

To achieve long term weight loss and weight management you need to understand a few basic principles. If you eat more calories than you burn off you will slowly gain weight. If you eat less calories then you burn off you will slowly lose weight. Therefore if you know how many calories you are consuming everyday and know how many you are burning, you will be able to effectively control your body weight.

How do you find out how many calories you need everyday? The simplest way is to ask at your local fitness facility to see if they have the equipment to test you with or if you are lucky enough to live within my training area I am able to carry out this test in your own home or you can vist me at my training studio.

What next? Once you have found out how many calories you need to maintain your weight, you will be able to reduce your intake by around 10% and start losing weight in a safe and controlled manner.

2) Plan your meals.

If you plan what you are going to eat, you will be able to manage your weight more effectively. You will spend less time with your head in the fridge trying to decide what to eat. If you know what you are going to be eating each day will be much less likely to over eat and/or snack on high calorie foods.

3) Check the packet.

If you always look at the nutritional values of the food that you eat you will slowly start to learn which foods should be eaten less frequently and which are low in fat. Always look at the 100g calorie breakdown. Treat all foods with more than 10g of fat per 100g as high fat foods and consume these in moderation.

4)Eat a varied diet.

Try to increase the amount of fruit and vegetables in your diet. People who consume a lot of fruit and vegetables are much healthier and are more likely to find weight management much easier.

5) Fill your cupboards with healthy snacks.

If you ensure that you have plenty of healthy snacks in your fridge and cupboards you will be able to eat maintain a healthly weight without eating high calories and high fat foods.

Weight Training – Starting Out

If you are new to the gym, home workouts or just haven’t use weight training as part of your programme then read on to discover the basics to safe and effective weight training.

Firstly you need to decide what you are trying to achieve by designing a weight training programme, once you have done this you will need to select the correct weight to be using for each exercise.
This can be achieved quite simply. Firstly ensure that you have warmed up correctly. Once your muscles are warm, select a light weight and perform the exercise on your programme, complete 12 repetitions.
Now select a heavier weight and perform one repetition, continue to increase the weight until you cannot complete a repetition under complete control. This weight is your power maximum.
Now you need to calculate what your working weight will be. As a beginner you should be looking at lifting 50% of your power maximum (PM).

Example: PM 20kg, therefore your working weight would be 10kg.

You will need to go through this process for all of your individual exercises until you have calculated all of your exercise weights.
Your programme is now ready to be followed. Start by performing 12 repetitions twice (2 sets of 12 reps) for each exercise. You should stick to these weights, sets and reps for at least 4 workout sessions.

You must leave at least one day of rest between each workout. Once you have completed your first 4 workouts, you are now ready to increase the repetitions. Increase the repetitions to 15 (2 sets of 15 reps), follow this workout pattern for another 4 sessions.
Once you have completed 4 sessions you can now increase the sets to 3 (3 sets of 12 reps). Again follow this workout for another 4 sessions.
Once completed increase the reps back to 15 (3 sets of 15 reps). Again follow this workout for a further 4 sessions.

Now it is time to increase the weights. You can reassess your PM for each exercise. Once you have done this you can calculate your new working weights.
You can now continue to complete 3 sets of 15 reps for 8 sessions before recalculating your working weights again. If you follow this pattern you are sure to increase your strength and muscle tone, safely and under control.
For more information on how to increase your strength, tone and muscle mass, please contact me and I can arrange a tailor made programme for you.