Last night’s seminar “Eating for fat loss – The balancing act” was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who attended!

Although I originally capped numbers at 12, I eventually ended up having 15 clients and 2 trainers attend. My apologies to those who missed out, I will have another one in a few weeks, so please register your interest in the comments section or via email directly to me.

I know we went a little long on time, wrapping up in just under 3 hours, there is still more I could have gone through, so what I will do is go over some of the important things.

What is stopping you from reaching your goals?

When I walked in this morning, up on the whiteboard was the list of reasons everyone gave for not achieving their goals, so I want to make that list here so you can be aware of what is holding you back and focus on changing it.

I am creating the list in the order you said it and the way you said it;

• Too many carbs
• Meal sizes
• Skipping meals
• Not being organised
• Drinking alcohol
• Inconsistency
• Laziness
• Boredom
• Escapism
• Socialising

So taking a look at that list, I can see that a lot of them relate to each other.

Why are you eating too many carbs, eating meals that are too big and skipping meals? Because you are not organised, lazy and inconsistent!

Why do you drink too much alcohol? Because of escapism and socialising!

If you are eating because of boredom then get a hobby!

These are all easy things to fix, you just need to put half as much effort into your own health as what you do into making your boss rich!

Insulin and fat gain.

Remember that when you eat just carbs, you will spike your blood sugars and release insulin. While this insulin is circulating, you will not use fat as a fuel. Balance your meals with carbs, protein and fat to moderate the effects on blood sugar levels.

The Glycemic index

Carbohydrates aren’t categorised into good carbs and bad carbs because I have something against them. I am merely the messenger, they ruined their own reputation when they were tested on the glycemic index, they have no-one to blame for their poor social stigma other than themselves and what they do to your blood sugar levels.

Food charts

Use those food charts wisely. At last there is a precise way to say what a portion should really look like. No more guessing and wondering why you are not losing weight. They are really easy to use, it may just take you a week or two to get used to it, but if you want me to go back to the work example, when you first started your current job, did you know what to do and find it easy on day 1? or day 2? No, like anything in life, it takes a bit of time to adjust to it and learn how to use it properly to get the full benefit from it!

Supplements

If you are trying to get a portion of protein at every meal without using a supplement, you are setting yourself up for failure.

How often do I hear things like;

• I missed morning tea because I was in a meeting or I was too busy.
• I didn’t have any protein at breakfast because I just didn’t have time to cook eggs.
• I had to just have [insert garbage food from foodcourt here] because I was at the shopping centre.
• I don’t normally get drive through, it was just because I was on the road a lot today.
• What protein can I possibly have with fruit?
• I’m sick of eating tuna.

I think you get the message.

There are a lot of products out there and most of them are so full of chemicals, you would be better off eating the box they come in, but I have combed the internet and health food shops and here are my pick of products;

Optimum Nutrition 100% why protein Natural, order at www.vitaminking.com.au/100-natural-whey-protein-by-optimum

Phyto Protein 100% Pea protein isolate, order at www.vitaminking.com.au/phyto-protein-pea-protein-isolate-by-logical-nutrition-pty-ltd-vital-greens

PureFit all natural protein bars, check them out at www.purefitaus.com/about-purefit-bars and order them with me directly and you won’t have to pay the $10 postage. Clients only.

Forum

The best way to move forward with the information that you have is to talk to others when you have a question. This is why I have set up this forum, so that any questions you have I can answer and at the same time, I am probably answering for 10 other people who also had the same question. So please post any comments about last night or any questions you have about your eating to the forum.

Why do I think CrossFit is the future of exercise?

Because it makes sense!

Walking into a gym filled with 10’s of thousands of $$ of useless machines, being bombarded by people in suits trying to sell me memberships and lying to me about what each wonderful machine will do for me does not make sense.

Walking into a gym where I can pick heavy things up, lift my own bodyweight up, get more balanced and coordinated and work my cardiovascular system without wasting hours on a treadmill does make sense.

CrossFit will get you ready for what life has to throw at you, be it picking something up, sprinting for a bus, getting up off the ground if I fall over, pulling myself over a fence, jumping over a puddle, running away from a mugger or anything that life can throw at you, because life is unpredictable.

I have heard it said that “CrossFit teaches you not to suck at life!”

So…

The basic description for CrossFit is Constantly Varied Functional Movement at High Intensity.

Breaking that down;

Constantly Varied – One of the main points of CrossFit is to specialise at not specialising. Become good a everything, thus building great overall fitness.

Here are the 10 avenues of fitness as defined by CrossFit;

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Agility
9. Balance
10. Accuracy

What other fitness program covers that many bases?

With the constant variety you receieve a broader experience thus creating better General Physical Preparedness!

Functional Movements – Real functional movements, not standing 1 legged on a wobbleboard with a medicine ball in one hand and body blade in the other…

Functional movements are;

1. Natural. Its ingrained in our brains and bodies to pick things up, move things around and move our own bodies at any angle and in any direction. 
2. Compound movements, yet irreducible. Multi jointed. 
3. Core to extremity. Core training is midline stabilization. Extremities are your arms and legs. Strong core, moves larger loads.
4. Essential to Independant living. Picking things up, putting things on shelves, playing sport
5. Safe compared to non-functional movements. How often we hear of injuries from the pec dec and the leg extension…
6. Can move large loads, long distances, quickly. This is one of the main points of the program.

High Intensity – Putting it simply, this is the independant variable which will either get you fit or not. You get out what you put in!

Power = Intensity

What is power? 

Force x Distance / Time = Power

Ok, so away from the science lesson. Lets say Force is your body weight and Distance is you standing up. Now, Time is how long it takes you to stand up. So power is how long it takes you to get your body from the ground up.

Simple and it makes sense.

Am I fit if I can bicep curl a weight in my hands 15 times x 3 sets then sit and chat in between sets without raising my heart rate?

or

Am I fit if I can do 120 squats in 4 minutes and have my heart rate through the roof without stepping foot on a treadmill?

Make sense?

I have so much to say, but I don’t want to bore you, so I will finish with one more comment. Nutrition is at the base of what you can do to your body by training correctly. Train hard and don’t nourish your body with the right food and you are wasting your time.

I will expand on many aspects of the program in future entries, but for now focus on training large movements at high intensities, regularly and in different ways combined with a diet rich in protein and vegetables, avoid sugar and you are on the road to success.

If you have any questions, please enter your comments and I will get back to you asap.

For more info straight from the horses mouth visit www.crossfitcom

Yours in Fitness

Troy Shipsey

Your favourite Personal Trainer in Randwick and Centennial Park

With the growth of the health and fitness industry due to an ever growing obese population, there are so many underqualified and very under experienced personal trainers out there. It seems every second person is a personal trainer or does a bit of “personal training” on the side…

Even the education providers are advertising easier and faster ways to get qualified. Each one is trying to outdo the next by making it easier to get qualified just so the other college won’t get the business.

And so, the standard of education and experience gets lower and lower due to the increased competition of education providers. Maybe this increased competition should improve standards by advertising who can give you the most experience and highest qualifications to convince you to train with them, rather than who can get you in and out of the door the quickest. Which by the way is a bit of a joke really, because these days you don’t even have to get in the door, you can do the whole thing at home by copying your friends assignments and case studies (oops, I mean via correspondence or “distance learning”). I saw enough of this when I worked at Australias largest gym chain which is home to the largest population of inexperienced trainers around, they don’t even need the minimum qualificatiosn to work there!
It is making the industry somewhat of a joke.

So many times these day, I see a personal training session being conducted but I cannot tell who is the trainer and who is the client!

Here are a few things to think about when choosing a personal trainer;

* Are they fatter than you? I think this is the most important! Why go to a trainer to lose weight if they can’t even lose weight themselves.

* Do they practice what they preach? Do they drink plenty of filtered water and eat a diet rich in fruits, veggies, lean protein and nuts. Limiting junk food to treats on weekends. How can they tell you to do something yet not do it themselves?

* Do they chat to you about how drunk they got on the weekend? Or are they trying to convince you that alcohol should be strictly limited.

* Can they answer your health and fitness questions? And not fumble through it like they are making it up.

* How much experience do they have? How many people have they helped so far?

* What is their client retention like? Are they constantly looking for new clients all the time? This is a sure fire way to know how good a trainer is by whether their clients stick with them, people are pretty savvy these days and when they see a cowboy, they either move on to another trainer, or give up because they have lost faith in the industry.

* Do they try to put you onto the latest gimmick or fad diet to get you to your goals?

* Do they tell you what you want to hear to get you onboard rather than the truth?

* Do they focus on your form and technique, ensuring your safety? Or are they just counting the reps and minutes to the end of the session? Do they even know what the correct technique is, or are they just re-enacting something they saw another trianer do?

Sometimes as time goes by, you can lose sight of why you started an exercise program in the first place. You think you still know, you tell yourself that when you get up and train once or twice a week, but then one day you stop and realise, hey, I was so motivated when I first started. I was training 5 days a week. I really wanted to get fit, I really wanted to lose those extra kilos, I really wanted to have more energy for life!

Well, have your goals changed? Probably not. What has changed, is your level of motivation.

So how do you get that motivation back?

Here is a video that was brought to my attention last week. If this guy cannot motivate you, then nothing can!

Awesome inspirational video

If you think it is hard to get out of bed because your tired, or it’s cold, or you hate getting wet, or you went out drinking last night, or any other little reason you think justifies not continuing to strive towards your goals. Have a thought for the young man in this video who says “there’s always someone worse off than yourself”.

Now that you have been motivated by that awesome video, I want you to consider this:

Motivation is an emotion and emotions change daily, if not more often. If you rely on motivation, you will never reach your goals!

When you have a goal, especially something as important as health and fitness, you need to work towards that goal, not do it when it suits you. And yes, health is the most important thing in life, whether you think it is or not, because without health, you have nothing….

Sorry to sound like a hard arse, but sometimes you need a kick up the bum to spark up the thoughts of your initial goals. Those goals that brought you to me in the first place….remember…..

Troy Shipsey

Fitta Bodies Personal Training

Centennial Park Outdoor Group Training Camp, Sydney