Bullshit, Brawn and Business

The 5:2, Keto, Slimming World, Weight Watchers; they all WORK! But why do they work?   The reasoning behind it is simple, it's because they make you subconsciously watch what you are eating. I have tried pretty much every single diet out there and I've lost weight on them all.  A diet that sticks in my mind and is at the forefront of current UK media is Keto. When I went on a Ketogenic I GOT SHREDDED! But the reason behind me getting super shredded on Keto wasn't because it's some kind of superior super diet. It was because I started to check the nutrients of every food I ate before I put it in my mouth. Chocolate; can't have that, it's got carbs in. Pasta; can't have that, carbs. Milk; can't have that, carbs again. You get the gist! Weight Watchers, another diet I got shredded on. Why? Because I was checking how many points a food was before I ate it!  However, as I've become more educated and knowledgeable I've learnt that I ca...

So your holiday is 6 weeks away, you've had a sloppy winter and an event packed summer, you get out the shower, look in the mirror and realise you look like a sock full of custard. It's time for drastic action.  First port of call = The internet! Whack in "How to lose fat fast" OR "How to build muscle fast" and BANG up come the results.  Unfortunately 99% of these 'shortcuts' are BULLSHIT! And because I'm so generous I'm going to explain why these 'shortcuts' are BS and explain how to actually get into the condition you want! Myth 1 - Fat Burners - Yes, they do have some benefits such as giving a caffeine boost and therefore mildly suppressing appetite. However, a good strong cup of coffee will also do this and it will save you £££'s. However, the effect of fat burners or coffee will be pretty much non existent if you aren't training 4+ times a week and in a calorie deficit. Myth 2 - Training With Your Hood Up ...

Last July I started a new job... Exciting I know! However, before I started I was aware that the job involved very long hours, 10 hours a day sometimes more. This meant that I had to fit my gym time into one of two slots, either before work or afterwork. After a little bit of thought I decided to go for the before work option as gyms are quieter in the mornings than the evenings, I would miss the morning rush hour if I found a gym by my workplace and I wouldn't be tempted to find an excuse throughout the course of the day not to hit my session afterwork. I managed to find a gym which was literally a two minute walk from work that coincidentally also had 24/7 opening hours! My first week at work came and went in a flash but it was absolutely creasing me. Not because the job was hard but because I was waking up at 4:45am getting my bag and breakfast ready for the day, then I was grabbing lunch on the go, which is never the healthiest, and then I was coming home and watching TV un...

Being as we've had a little bit of a heatwave in the UK this weekend many peoples attention has been turned to the upcoming summer and the holidays that come with it. The thought of the summer often strikes fear into people as they don't feel summer ready in terms of their bodies, and the fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as the perfect body and therefore you can't expect to turn into a Greek God/Goddess overnight, you have to work with what you have and look how to make marginal, sustainable improvements over a period of time. However, this post isn't about getting in shape, its about maintaining what you have over the summer, in a period often littered with booze fuelled BBQ's and calorie busting candle-lit dinners overlooking the ocean. For those of you that don't know I spent the summer of 2015 living in Crete, Greece and before I went I was in fairly good shape, relatively shredded and naturally I wanted to maintain that shape for as long as p...

When I talk to people about my training, the thing that seems to startle people most is that I train first thing in the morning. What I'm going to do in this article is attempt to explain why I do this. Historically I have never been a morning person, I was the person who would get out of bed at the latest possible moment in order to get somewhere on time but in January 2013 I realised that I was using the excuse 'I don't have time' too often not only in terms of keeping fit but with my work as well. I was right I didn't have time to work out and complete all of my work to a high standard because I would spend the first 3-4 hours of the day procrastinating, thinking about how tired I was and therefore made a change to my lifestyle in order to become more productive. The change was getting my arse up in the morning and train! What I quickly found out is that the hardest part of training in the morning is actually turning up. The 10 seconds between my alarm going ...

Every diet, when implemented properly has some kind of restrictions, whether thats a restriction of certain foods or the amount of calories you can consume. With restriction come cravings, cravings for the things you can't have. Its human nature to want the things you can't have, but when it comes to diet most of us it seems just can't help ourselves. We're now moving into February and its been a month since you promised yourself that you would eat healthily but the reality of it is a Chinese take away has never sounded so tempting. The problem that I find with the majority of diets today is that they 'ban' certain things and it causes the big red button syndrome amongst people. What I mean by the big red button syndrome is that if somebody tells you don't press the button, the only thing you want to do is press that button. So when somebody tells you that you cannot eat chocolate, the only thing you want is chocolate. What a lot of dieticians and fitn...