So, you want to be Fit for Summer?

Fed up with feeling 'frumpy and grumpy' every Summer, when you should really be having the time of your life, during the best season of the year?

Whilst we all know that we should look after our health, fitness & wellbeing, a priority in our lives 365 days a year, the fact is, we all want to feel at least a basic level of confidence and comfort in our own skin when it’s time to ditch the baggy clothes we can use behind during the Winter.

If you want to wake up on on the first morning of Summer, feeling hot to trot, then you need to give some serious consideration to getting going......now.
We’d like to share with you, precisely what you need to do to drop 1-2 dress sizes (your starting size and weight dependant of course) between now and August 1st.

And you’re going to learn how it’s entirely possible without :

1) Crash Dieting
2) Necking stupid supplements
3) Beasting yourself to within an inch of your life in the gym
4) Feel overwhelmed, deprived, and restricted

We believe in breaking the complex down into the simple - and having coached 1,000’s of people over the years, we’ve learnt that one of the biggest obstacles most people have, is being able to create a step by step plan that feels achievable.

​When we see the steps we need to take, we immediately start believing that we can do it.
And when that happens, motivation kicks in - win win!

So......let's crack on.

1) Break it down

A Goal without a plan, is just a WISH !

Remember, this post is specifically about getting in shape for Summer
And we define getting in shape as “feeling a basic level of confidence in your body, by August 1st.

That's 7 weeks away (at time of writing) - plenty of time!

Let's pick a middle of the road number - 1 stone for example.

Losing 1 stone between now and July 1st is entirely possible (we've seen it happen time and time again with real world clients)

1 stone is 14lbs.
So that's 2lbs a week.

Already sounding doable, just from having it framed like that?
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Good - so now let's dive into what you'll need to do with your nutrition, exercise and mindset, in order to wake up on July 1st, feeling hot-to-trot, and ready to PARTY!

2) Nutrition

1) We don't have to count calories, but calories do count.

2) If you focus on eating for health & energy, you will naturally consume less calories, and begin to shed unwanted bodyfat.

3) The best nutrition plan, is the one you stick to.

4) "Better not perfect" is the best mantra to adopt when it come to changing your eating habits.

We have our own nutrition plan we recommend to all our clients - The C.H.E.A.T Eating system - which gives you just 5 simple habits to focus on, that covers ALL basis of healthy eating for energy and fat-loss.

And we've not had to amend it once, since we first wrote it over 5 years ago.
Why?

Because it is based on principles.
Common sense.

And it is based on helping people to SEE themselves differently when it comes to nutrition - rather than just another arbitrary "eat this, and don't eat that" approach.

When you have sustained, natural energy through a good diet, you will experience far less cravings for sugar and other forms of ‘instant energy’.

The result?
Less empty calories.

When you eat foods full of nutrients (eg. whole foods) your body will switch on the “fullness signals” earlier.

We regularly hear people who used to insist that “they were always hungry” suddenly start eating a lot less, purely through increasing their nutrient intake.
The human body craves vitamins and minerals first, calories second.

When you consciously focus on hydration, your appetite decreases, your energy increases, and your body becomes far more efficient at burning fat (the chemical process going on inside the body when fat is physically “burnt” takes place in a water-rich environment).

We actually place hydration - drinking 3 litres of water a day, at the TOP of our nutritional advice.

What’s the one thing? .....YOUR "one thing" ?

95% of people know what a decent diet looks like?

Let’s face it, you don’t need us to tell you that some Fish and vegetables is better for you than a KFC bargain bucket.

It’s rarely a case of what we need to do more of with our eating habits - it’s more often a case of what we need to do LESS of.

And we all have our “one thing”.
A “one thing’ is a bit like the domino at the start of a domino rally.

Without tipping the one domino over, the rest doesn’t work.
Yet when we DO tip it over, the whole set-up usually works.

Your “one thing” might be that 2 glasses of wine you have EVERY night.

It might be the mid morning croissant that you just can’t say no to.
It could be the fact you hardly eat all day, then get home and overeat on processed food or takeaways.

​Spend a few moments right now, asking yourself what your one thing is, that if you changed, or improved (remember, “better not perfect”) would have a BIG impact on the rest of your diet.

3) Exercise 

Exercise has so many benefits from improving flexility and balance, improving heart health, improving sleep, and even improving mental health.

But this article is about “getting in shape for Summer” so we’ll keep the focus there.
When it comes to shedding excess fat, especially around those troublesome spots, nutrition is 70-80% of it.

You probably know that, but we see a lot of people "hoping" that we wouldn't say that - because they want to find a way around it.

Boring statement alert.........There are NO shortcuts!

Exercise DOES matter though, and if done correctly, can manipulate your metabolism, quite spectacularly.

This point is critical to understand, because exercise for weight loss and fat-burning, is a very different ‘thing’ to just expending energy, getting sweaty & out of breath, or beasting yourself in the belief that it’s about sheer graft.

We believe that when it comes to fitness & exercise, it’s about working smarter, not harder.
Your metabolism is the sum of all the thousands of processes going on in your body at any one time.

Cells dieing and regenerating.

Energy being used for your heart to beat and your lungs to pump.

The body is constantly using up energy (calories) every second of the day.

See, around 65-75% of the energy we burn every single day (including when we are asleep) comes from our Resting Metabolic Rate (our hearts beating, our lunge pumping, even our brains thinking!).

​Knowing this, it makes sense to increase that 70% of our total energy expenditure, so that we are burning way more fat, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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Striving to burn off as many calories as possible in an exercise session itself, is a futile endeavour.

Exercise itself accounts for a tiny fraction of the total energy we burn each day.

The goal then, is to increase our metabolism so that we burn more energy the rest of the day.
And to do this, you need to train your body in a certain way.

HiiT (high intensity interval training) is the latest craze.

It’s backed by science and is a time-efficient way of improving fitness.
But in order to really change body composition (less fat, and more muscle ‘tone’), we need to include targeted resistance exercises (using dumbbells or kettlbebells for example).

We understand the sciencey, biology side to all of this, so you don’t have to.
And it’s enabled us to combine the best parts of what works from various approaches, to create our unique Metabolic Accelerator Training™ system that we use with all our clients.

The final point on exercise, is that it needs to fit into YOUR life.

There’s no point us telling new mums, busy self-employed women, or fulltime workers, that they need to magically find 5+ hours a week.

Our studio-based program operates on just 3 x 45 minute sessions a week - and the results speak for themsleves.

Our online program, operates on 5 x 14 minute sessions a week.
14 minutes a day!

​Both approaches are based on the same principles of creating ‘spikes’ in metabolism.
The take home point is that you don’t need to slog you guts off in order to change your body - you just need to do the RIGHT things.
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4) Your Mindset

Our favourite topic.

We understand that every single person we work with, is a human being and not just a body of muscle, bones and fat.

We understand that every single person we work with, is a human being and not just a body of muscle, bones and fat.

We understand that we are all complex beings, with various stresses and struggles going on in life, and that the outdated “eat less, move more” approach will never, ever work.

We believe that fitness and health should be the foundation of life - but not something to obsess over.

And we believe that everyone will keep ‘veering off track’…….frequently.

But it doesn’t matter so long as you:

a) recognise that you’re off track sooner rather than later
b) keep adjusting your course

NOBODY gets from A to B in a straight line.

But NOBODY wakes up one day, 3 stone overweight.

Part of our coaching model, is based around encouraging people to continually “check in” with themselves.

To say, even if it’s just once a week; “how am I feeling? what’s my energy like? is my body in a better or worse state than last week?”

And then importantly, encouraging them to refocus and keep going.

There’s no such thing as self-sabotage or any of those phrases used to explain away behaviour.

There’s only a refusal to LISTEN to our bodies, and ignore them.
Imagine if you only ever went a few days off track with your health, fitness and habits.

Either because you developed the discipline to keep checking in with yourself, or because you had a Coach to be that ‘gentle nag’ in the background - consistently asking you to make your own, better decisions, about what to do.

Summer is around 7 weeks away (at time of writing).

2lbs a week is totally achievable.
And it doesn’t require a “perfect diet” and “seamless exercise plan”.

You won’t eat ‘perfectly’ all the time, and even if you tried, you’d make yourself miserable and feel deprived.
There’ll be times when you don’t manage all your exercise sessions, and be tempted to beat yourself up, or simply give up.

The goal with all of this, is really to keep going.
It’s easy to do all these things when motivation is high.

But it’s those days that we ALL have, when motivation is low, that we need to do our best.
That’s the difference, and that’s why mindset matters most.

And that’s why so many people reach out to us - because they recognise that the fastest way to success, is to get a coach for accountability and guidance.
I’ll close by saying that it’s important to be proactive.

We actually don’t believe in short term aesthetic goals - we believe in training for the biggest event of all - LIFE !

But once or twice year, we understand that everyone wants to be in shape for a specific event or occasion.

​And let’s not forget that we all put a few pounds on over Summer, what with all those BBQs, holidays, and cold drinks on beautiful, warm evenings -- so having a bit of ‘breathing space’ to put those few pounds on, without stressing about it, can only be a bonus.
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