Well, I have a solution for you!

Make sure you always have a well stocked freezer and cupboards, and with a few select ingredients, you can throw together a healthy, satisfying meal in minutes, without falling off the proverbial wagon…

I would also suggest that if you are finding this happening regularly, then you should review your planning and preparation strategies!  Luckily all my clients review goals, action plans and suchlike each month and I remind them to plan their weekly food and give them a shopping list template to make things a bit easier.   Getting into the regular habit of shopping at certain times makes life a lot easier!  Also, there is ALWAYS a better alternative than a take-away – in the age of 24 hour supermarkets, salad available in service stations etc – make sure you don’t let a less than perfect situation merely provide you with the excuse you were looking for to make a poor food choice, you know you’ll regret it!

Anyway, back to the recipe.

All you need:

Canned chickpeas (organic in water)

Canned chopped tomatoes

A red onion (these last in the fridge for ever, the only thing needed in the fridge and you could do it without!) and a clove or 2 of garlic.

Bag frozen spinach – the whole leaf, Sainsbury’s do a baby leaf that works well

Garam masala (or any spices you like really)

Balsamic vinegar, celtic sea salt, black pepper (all optional to taste)

Frozen cod fillets, or other lean protein of choice, if you like.

Coconut oil, or butter

With these ingredients you can make the delicious:

‘Emergency’ Spinach and Chickpea (and fish or chicken if you like!) Curry:

• Steam 500 + g frozen baby leaf whole spinach, or a couple of bags of regular spinach if you have it. I actualy prefer using frozen (the new baby leaf from Sainsburys is great) as it doesn’t shrink so is easier to cook, plus has the added benefit of meaning that this is a quick option you can make even when the fridge is bare (so long as you have an onion, which you could leave out really…).
• I actually tend to do this with a 1kg bag spinach and double up on the chickpeas / tomatoes and save some for future meals.
• Meanwhile, saute a red onion in coconut oil (or butter), add a clove of garlic (or you can add this later if you prefer). Add a tablespoon or so of garam masala and stir.
• Drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and add these to the pan, stirring to coat in all the spicy yumminess…
• Add the steamed spinach to the pan (drain any excess water) and add a tin of chopped tomatoes, and a sqirt of tomato paste.  Stir well.
• I also add a splash of balsamic at this point, and some celtic sea salt & black pepper, and cook a while longer to let the flavours do their thing.

You can serve this as a side dish with some salad and some lean protein of choice.  The first time I made this I steamed a few pieces of cod / salmon (again straight from the freezer) and then stirred the fish in to make a complete meal (veggies of course can leave that bit out!).  I split it into several tupperware pots and took away with me for the weekend, along with some salad and some Juice in a Bars, so I was well sorted and not left to junk food after a hard days windsurfing!

Would love to hear what you think!

There are loads of recipes in the Fit Body Fix Members Manual, to make healthy eating a way of life, and a truly enjoyable one at that.  Dropping dress sizes without deprivation or dieting, that is a win-win situation!

I have been thinking about Christmas a lot recently, and the effect it has on people. So many people have kind of given up on their nutrition and training, misguidedly assuming that all the parties and special celebratory meals will mean we are bound to gain body fat between now and New Year, and thus have decided to forget about it till the New Year…

But that is crazy! ANY fat loss programme should have space for the odd splurge, and this time of year need not derail you completely, if at all!

The important thing is to make sure that you are especially good at the times when you can be, and save the splurges for the parties and events. And also, when you are there, make sure you don’t just eat everything in sight, but truly enjoy the things you really love! Savour them, and don’t bother with the things that you can have any day of the year.

You can visit the blog below to get your copy of the grid, or just make your own, a column per day and row per meal. Then just fill it in throughout the week!

I have a couple of clients at either end of the spectrum of compliance for which this chart has been super useful.

One has changed loads about her nutrition and is doing really well, but the odd treats are still sneaking in. This means she isn’t losing as quickly as she would like, and she is getting frustrated.

When you use the grid, you tick or cross each meal depending on whether it was compliant to your particular nutrition plan for that meal. If you have a dessert you shouldn’t have had after a healthy meal, that is a cross. If you eat double your calories, that would also be a cross. I personally ‘double cross’ on a Friday and Saturday at the moment, as I have some wine with my meal both days, and also have a (usually healthy but sometimes naughty!) dessert.

Looking at the grid put this into perspective: the client above was hitting 60-70%. Fine for maintenance, but not for fat loss! For that you need to be hitting 90% ideally. If you eat 4-5 times per day then you have 3-4 meals / snacks you can not be ‘compliant’ to your plan, and still be at 90%! So you should (so long as you don’t count a huge meal out as one ‘cross’ on the grid and do that 4 times a week!) lose body fat and be well on track, without having to be ‘perfect’.

On the other hand, I had a client who lost 7lb pure fat in 3 weeks but was totally gutted as she had ‘totally blown’ her diet over the weekend. When I probed, it turned out she’d not had a huge binge at all, but just one meal (I’d actually count it as a snack, and no-where near a binge!) on the Saturday that was not on her plan. The guilt she felt led to her having a similar meal twice on Sunday, so by the time I saw her she was feeling terrible!

But if she had just put a cross on her grid on the Saturday, seen she had been perfect the entire week, she would have realised she was well on track! And probably would have not had the repeat experience the next day! And in fact, she still hit 90% as those were the only 3 meals / snacks off plan the whole week.

What this chart does is help you get a bit of perspective on things. An ‘all or nothing’ mentality is one of the most destructive when it comes to nutrition and training. It gets us quick, short term results, but then the ‘nothing’ part hits on the training side and the ‘all’ hits the nutrition and things take a nose dive! But equally, you can’t just ignore the little treats that can all so easily sneak in each day, around an otherwise healthy diet.

Over Christmas, you might decide maintenance is your plan. In that case you can allow yourself a bit more leeway for a couple of weeks, say that 60-70% compliance. You can choose the events you want to have a ‘splurge’ on and plan what that might be, and make doubly sure all other meals are on track. I find that once you change your lifestyle to more healthy foods, you will be surprised at how this becomes easier – even on holiday when I think I’m really ‘off plan’ I still hit at least 60 – 70% as I just prefer healthier foods, and don’t like feeling low on energy and sluggish.

You can tighten up to 95% the weeks where you don’t have much on, and of course in the New Year (I can’t this year as a busy Jan / Feb which is helping keep me on track over the festive season!) to speed things up or just balance things out a bit when you get the chance, but you no longer have to think ‘I’ll start on Monday’ or ‘I’ll be super strict in January’.

Just think, you can actually enjoy January this year! You won’t have let yourself lose it totally, because you have indulged a bit, so you won’t have to ‘pay the price’ in the New Year. You can maintain a sense of calm and balance about the festivities, knowing you are still on track!

Caroline Radway is a certified Personal Trainer who wants you to get the fitness and fat loss results that you deserve. She has developed her M.I.R.A.C.L.E Success System and S.I.M.P.L.E. Nutrition System that are proven to get results, fast!

Are you already resigned to the fact that you are going to be one of the millions who gains weight over Christmas? Have you decided that it’s all too much trouble to try to manage to ‘stick to your diet’ so you might as well not bother at all?

Or, are you one of the rarer people, who by the way do exist in greater numbers than the media might have you believe, that won’t gain anything?

You might be reading this having put yourself in the first category, but I can help you get into the second category with some real-life advice!

No, I do not suggest you skip Christmas Pud in favour of a fat free yoghurt! And I do not suggest you hide in the corner at the parties you are attending, miserably slurping a glass of water. I’ve (proudly) done this myself, and if you are in the middle of a massive fat loss mission then I would say stick with it – your goal is more important than that glass of wine. When I was on a mega-mission it didn’t even bother me that I was sipping sparkling water with a splash of sugar free cranberry when others were on the Champagne, and it certainly didn’t bother me that I was on sugar-free jelly and cream when all others were drowning in sugar. Because I was a woman on a mission!

However, you might just have a few pounds to lose that you can ‘put on hold’ for a month, and just want to focus on maintenance, and that is where being too strict over the festive season can actually be counter-productive!

If you are too strict and you go into a state of restriction and denial every single Christmas, just so you don’t gain weight, you can end up having a ‘re-bound’ in January! It is actually far better to enjoy the season in a balanced and sensible way. If every Christmas is the same story, then it is time to change tack. When you have a massive goal, then go for it, but if you find that every year you are fighting with food, take a step back and focus on maintenance instead!

You don’t want to end up at either one of the extremes: gaining lots of weight or overly restricting so you end up rebound gaining in January.

The cycle of ‘restrict’ and ‘overdo it’ is so typical of the dangerous ‘all or nothing’ mentality so many of us are prone to (me included, but I have learned to manage it!). We think that as we can’t be 100% then we might as well not bother, and that when we get to January and have a clear run with no obstacles to overcome we’ll be able to make up for our December excesses…

But, the reality is rarely that simple – things come up in January that mean we are, again, given obstacles to overcome. And so the cycle continues, all year, year after year.

Far better, don’t you think, to manage December in a realistic ‘maintenance’ mindset?

I personally recommend that clients use a Compliance Chart (see the blog link below to download a copy of the one I use) so they can see how many meals hit their plan and how many don’t. In a fat loss phase I need 90% compliance for results. In a maintenance phase there is more leeway, but you would not want to just ignore it altogether and eat every meal ‘off plan’ as you will gain weight, but perhaps even more importantly, feel terrible! No wonder there are so many arguments at a time when we should be harmonious and loving and kind – most people are in a sugar and fat induced haze!

So, the first step is to stick to the plan as far as you can, making sure that for the day to day meals and snacks, you eat as you would normally, and I would even suggest being a bit tighter than normal to help balance things out even more.

Then, look at the events you have lined up and plan to enjoy them! You don’t need to go over-board and I would definitely recommend that you pick the indulgences you really love and go for those FIRST! The more boring things that are available all year round are there anytime, so focus on the festive treats. But equally, you don’t have to have a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine every night in December to enjoy Christmas – in fact if you reduce the occasions on which you have these things, you actually will enjoy them more!

Savour every single bite and sip of these indulgences! We over-eat when we eat mindlessly, and we don’t actually enjoy food when we rush it, so we are just shoving down calories pointlessly. I always used to eat really fast, but have purposely slowed it down and it has made a huge difference – I feel fuller sooner, eat less and enjoy more – a win-win situation if ever there was one!

DO NOT FEEL GUILTY! If you feel you have over-done things, then balance it out a bit over the next few meals. If you feel too full after a meal, remind yourself that it doesn’t make you feel good – learn from it, don’t beat yourself up about it. Guilt and the ‘all or nothing’ mentality are a lethal combination – don’t let them win! It’s not never falling, its getting up every time you fall that ensures victory, after all.

Keep up with your training, but also feel free to modify it. Again, if you are too rigid you will shoot yourself in the foot – if the workout you usually do involves getting to the gym and you can’t, a rigid and all or nothing approach will mean you end up doing nothing. Instead, focus on the opportunities. I have made sure I get the room at my mum’s house with space for me to do yoga, and will be taking my yoga mat and favourite yoga DVD. I’ll also be taking my TRX and skipping rope, but even without these you can do a great metabolism boosting bodyweight workout anywhere! Even if you only spend 15 minutes a day on this, it will make a huge difference.

Try this circuit that requires nothing except your body (and some calories!):

20 bodyweight squats (10 faster and 10 super slow)

20 push ups (10 fast, 10 super slow)

15 split squats on each leg

15 dolphins (on forearms in a plank pose but feel a bit closer so your hips are higher than shoulders, draw shoulders forward and hips towards the ground and return to standing)

15 Burpees

Repeat that 2-5 times, after a mobility based warm up and follow with some stretches.

Another tactic that I have personally decided to employ over the next month, is that of calorie cycling. This is a well-known and scientifically validated approach to eating that actually makes use of those higher calorie days for a metabolism boost!

There are various ways of doing this, but a basic plan involves eating between 25 & 50% of your maintenance calories on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (depending on your goal) and then eat normally the other days. Most ‘naturally slim’ people who seem to stay thin effortlessly will employ this strategy without even realising it. After a large meal they will often not be that hungry and not eat much the next day.

This strategy is especially useful at this time of year – I don’t want to worry about things too much on Christmas Day, and while I won’t pig out (following the strategies above), and I will certainly have fewer roast potatoes and more turkey and veg, I will eat more than I actually need to on that day! I will exercise in the morning, go for a walk before and after dinner, but I still will likely end up in calorie surplus. It is actually good simply to acknowledge this – most people over-estimate calories out and way under-estimate calories in all year round, which is why weight gain tends to creep up on us.

So, instead of continuing to feast on Boxing day, I am going to have a ‘light’ day, sticking to fewer calories, cleaner foods and lots of water. Then the next day we’ll be up at my fiancee’s house for Christmas Day ’round 2′ so I can again indulge a little, and will have another ‘light’ day the next day. I won’t be sticking to the Mon-Wed-Fri approach, I will freestyle it to suit the events that are lined up.

This is not a binge / starve cycle or recommendation. You are meant to have maintenance calories on the higher calorie days and you are definitely encouraged to keep to healthy, unprocessed foods all the time, for wellbeing and health as well as preventing fat gain. But this really helps balance out those days where we do go over maintenance, and in fact, the occasional day of doing just that can actually boost your metabolism.

This plan prevents any kind of ‘starvation mode’ where you get to the point where you are so hungry you can eat anything in sight, as you only have one lighter day before you can have a more satisfying day. You will likely find that some of the things you promise yourself you will have on the higher days you are not so bothered about when you can actually have them, and many people find that their appetite naturally drops even on the higher days, as they become accustomed to lighter eating.

So, in summary:

1. Plan your indulgences and ENJOY and SAVOUR every moment and mouthful! No guilt!

2. Consider using a Compliance Grid to encourage you to make the other meals ‘on plan’ and prevent yourself from just going all out on every meal: DITCH THE ALL OR NOTHING MENTALITY!

3. Exercise every day, don’t be rigid and do whatever you can do. Walk lots and play with active games rather than sitting watching TV!

4. Consider ‘Calorie Cycling’, alternating your high calorie days with ‘light’ days where you cut calories to 25-50% of normal intake.

Should this not mean that my entire existence is pointless?

Well, as it is my job to ensure that my clients get results, I need to make sure I am up on all the latest research, and when research tells me exercise doesn’t work, I need to take notice – as do you.

A study by researchers at the University of Texas came up with this conclusion, after studying 100 previously sedentary participants – half of whom stayed sedentary and half began exercising. The exercisers followed a programme of 5.5 – 6 hours of activity per week, including weight training and interval training for a total of 12 weeks. The rest did nothing. The subjects were between 35% and 40% body fat to begin with. All the training was designed by Dr John Berardi, a highly respected trainer and nutritionist, although significantly there was no dietary intervention.

The shocking result was that the exercisers didn’t do much better than the non-exercisers.

Yep, without changing their nutrition, 12 weeks of high intensity training resulted in a loss of only 1 pound of fat with 2lb gain in lean muscle (weight gain!).

Another recent study published in April 2008 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism showed a very similar result – 10 weeks of intense training showed hardly any change in body composition – there was some fat loss, but nothing exciting. Not when you consider that most of us really want to ‘burn fat fast’ and are desperate to get results, this is not encouraging.

Most of us would be so discouraged that we would give up on the exercise altogether – which is absolutely not what we should be doing.

So what is the ‘take-home’ point I’m making here?

Well, that you cannot out-train a bad diet for one! And you definitely cannot exercise and then ‘reward yourself’ with a larger portion at dinner or a dessert!

It is absolutely critical that you look at making changes to your diet as well as increasing your exercise levels, otherwise all your efforts could be a waste of time. So, where to start?

Eat 5-10 portions of vegetables EVERY DAY! -

Eat a portion of lean protein with every meal (and ideally some protein in each snack) Eliminate white, starchy, refined carbs (wheat-based products, sugar, pastries, cakes, cookies, white rice, white potatoes, white pasta etc.) and replace with smaller portions of wholegrain carbs (sweet potatoes, oats, quinoa, brown rice, wholegrain pasta, wholegrain – ideally sourdough – breads). Focus more on veg though.

Include good fats: cook with coconut oil, drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil on veggies or salads (with apple cider vinegar for extra fat burning and health promotion), have small portions of nuts (almonds / walnuts) with fruit as a snack or in your salads, try avocado instead of mayo…

Drink plenty of water, eliminating sodas altogether, even the diet ones! Tea and coffee in moderation and without sugar or excessive cream (a little organic cream in coffee can be OK)

Keep an overall check on calories – to reduce without counting calories just reduce your current intake by 10%. If you see no results after a couple of weeks, reduce by another 10%.

Think 90:10% – let yourself off the hook occasionally, but make sure it is only 10% of your weekly total, so as not to obliterate all your results.

Experiment! Try a new whole food every week and make it your mission to find healthy foods that you positively love to eat – I certainly love my food, eat plenty of it and feel great, as it is nourishing me, not sapping me.

Exercise is definitely a vital part of the fat loss equation – as well as having a hugely important impact improving health, wellbeing, energy and performance. Dieting alone to lose weight results in muscle loss and a reduced metabolism, propagating the ‘yo-yo’ weight loss / gain cycle most people are well aware of. But exercise alone is not enough!

Exercise and nutrition, along with sufficient rest and recovery, are the keys to losing fat and maintaining your new physique for life.

Goals help steer you through the rough patches: when you wake up feeling a bit tired and think ‘I can’t be bothered to train’, it is all to easy to hit the snooze button.

However, if you have set yourself short, medium and long term goals, today’s behaviour becomes part of a bigger picture, and the consequences of not getting up are harder to ignore.

If you have a short term goal, such as ‘I will train 3 times this week’ that is linked to an outcome that you truly want, such as ‘losing 5lb of body fat’ or a longer term goal, such as ‘I will run the Race for Life in 3 months time’ then the single training session is no longer an isolated event that can be missed out. It becomes part of a chain of events that will take you, step-by-step, to your ultimate goals.

You should set yourself compelling goals, that you actually want to achieve.

A lot has been said on keeping your goals SMART:

Specific: ‘I will lose 6lb’ rather than ‘I want to lose a bit of weight’.

A word of caution here, however. We should focus on our ‘sphere of influence’ – the things we have direct control over. We have control over the actions we take – so training regularly and eating right – but the actual amount of weight / fat we lose is actually not within our direct control. It is an outcome of our behaviour, so we should focus the goals on the behaviours that are required, in order to achieve the desired outcome.

So a goal of: ‘exercising with my trainer 3 times per week, walking for 30 minutes 3 times per week and eating according to my diet plan for the next 6 weeks’ is a goal we have direct control over. Take measurements (and photos!) on day one and remeasure regularly to track progress.

If you’re not moving in the right direction then you need to change your methods – looking at your exercise and nutrition more closely. If you are building up your running then ensure you know the distances you are running and the time it is taking – I have a GPS that I take with me when training clients so we know exactly how far and how fast!

Measurable: Aiming too high can be demotivating: if you have never run before, then a marathon in 3 months time is not the best idea, but a 5km might be! Aim for 1lb a week fat loss, rather than 10lb in a fortnight – you may lose quicker, in which case you can always revise the goals later.

But on the other hand, do aim high enough. It can be hard to imagine that losing a stone is possible, but it is, and in theory should take no more than 14 weeks on the 1lb a week timescale – if you ensure goals are broken down into shorter term goals you can see how it can be achievable.

Achievable: Setting unrealistic goals can be counter-productive – some people do this as it offers them an excuse to fail with a bit of dignity intact, whereas if you fail to achieve a more realistic goal you will feel more of a failure. Counter-productive, of course, and if you follow good goal-getting methods and take action on your goals you don’t need to worry about failing as it won’t happen!

Realistic: However, sometimes you truly have to ‘dare to dream’ and keep a long term goal in mind that might seem totally unrealistic at the moment. So long as you are achieving short term goals and taking things step by step you will be getting closer to this ‘crazy dream’ and you just might well make it a reality.

Visualisation is important too – regularly imagining yourself having achieved your goals is a very powerful tool indeed! How does it feel in your new body? How much do you now love ‘bikini-time’? A daily day-dream of how life will be when you achieve your goals tricks your mind into thinking it has already happened, and makes getting there much easier!

But remember also to appreciate yourself as you are – focus on your good points and let your visualisation include these: for example how great it is that your thighs are more toned because you can finally show off your tiny waist in a bikini.

Your nutrition and exercise plan is all part of truly making the best of yourself: adding lean muscle and shedding excess body fat, improving your posture and increasing your energy. There is no need to compare yourself against unrealistic (and probably airbrushed) targets as it’s all within you, waiting to come out!

Time-Bound: Give yourself a deadline and stick to it! If you want to improve your running, pick an event and get signed up! Project manage your goals like you would any other important task. Bear in mind that weight and size is an outcome, so make sure that you are focusing on the behaviours first. Log your success in a journal to show you are sticking to your plan.

If goals are clear, SMART and compelling, broken down into short, medium and long term goals, they are much easier to achieve. It can be hard to reconcile today’s behaviour with achieving a goal that is too distant or too vague so keep it real and close to you by visualising and reflecting upon your goals daily.

Obviously the element we haven’t discussed is the behaviours needed to succeed – thinking about goals is only going to work when matched with the appropriate action!

Taking goal-setting into goal-getting requires action – so whatever you do, make sure you are taking steps every day to get closer to your goals. When your goals are vivid and clear then you will know that each and every action you take will either take you a step closer, or a step further away. Remind yourself of the ‘why’ and make sure that each decision is taking you a step closer to your dreams.

As a trainer, my love for the gym waned rapidly. The lighting, the incessant repetitive music, the fact that most people jump on machines thinking that they will get results by just attending, the mindless plodding away on a cross trainer while watching TV…

As a freelance trainer, I began to get much more creative. Skipping, boxing, bodyweight exercises all began to feature more in my programmes, as I didn’t have the ‘fall back’ of all the shiny gym equipment.

But, despite seemingly ‘compromising’ I began to get better and better results! The workouts were more fun and dynamic, and could be done absolutely anywhere. Both me and my clients were benefitting from the fresh air and wellbeing effects of the great outdoors.

However, it was not until I discovered kettlebells that my clients (and my) results began to skyrocket. I invested in a selection and cleared space in the garage. I bought a few DVDs and was blown away! I was not even moving from the small space I had in the garage, yet I was getting the best workouts of my life.

Kettlebells allow you workout in numerous different ways, all with the same tool. You can work strength, strength-endurance, endurance, power and flexibility all with one object. The key is manipulating the set and rest periods, or the way you are holding the kettlebell.

One of the main factors in choosing equipment for working out at home is maximising space, and kettlebells are great in that respect. You really can have 1 or 2 and get a wealth of great training in, and they are easy to stash in a cupboard or under a bed (and make great doorstoppers!) while you’re not actually using them. You can throw (well, place) them in the car and take them to the park or the beach, so you can start enjoying your exercise surroundings as well as the workout.

So, efficiency all round: time efficient as you don’t have to travel to the gym, space efficient as they can be neatly stored and you don’t even need much space to actually use them, and workout-time efficient as you get more bang for your buck, burning more calories and getting a more effective workout in minimal time.

Give them a try!

1. MINDSET.

A can-do attitude is so important. The foundation of this is a real desire to achieve. Think about what you want and why. Think about how highly you prioritise a healthy lifestyle and what you are prepared to change to achieve this.

2. GOAL SETTING & GETTING.

Be clear about what you want to achieve. Write it down. Write it where you can see it regularly. Be precise and aim high! Then break it down into manageable chunks and work on one piece at a time. Remind yourself of your goals regularly and don’t be afraid to update them. Keep an index card in your bag or by your computer (or on the fridge…) so you can keep your mind on the prize!

3. ACTIVITY.

Increase general activity any way you can. This is so important and can cover the effects of the odd missed workout! There are people who never ‘work out’ officially but are still fit as they are naturally active in their daily lives – walking or cycling around, using stairs not lifts, performing manual work etc. Look honestly into your life and seek out the pockets of activity you can exploit.

4. PLANNING AND PREPARATION.

Without planning, how can you expect to succeed? We don’t leave for a journey with no map, otherwise we would only end up getting lost, or back where we started if we are lucky! This applies to planning your approach (what am I going to eat, how and when am I going to exercise etc.) as well as planning the details (e.g. menu plans for the week’s meals feeding into a shopping list that you stick to). Plan what you are going to choose when you go out, looking online for menus if you can so you can make healthy choices in advance. On the exercise side, you need to decide which activities you want to take part in and schedule them into your diary – if you wait for a free 30 mins you are never going to find it! Schedule it in and commit to your appointment.

5. NUTRITION.

Clean it up! Eat lots of veggies, plenty of fruit, lean proteins, good fats and plenty of water. Minimise anything packaged or that does not fall into the above categories. Experiment, play with your food! Focus on enjoying the good stuff rather than the foods you are minimising or avoiding. Improving the quality of the diet should automatically result in the weight dropping off, but you also need to pay attention to eating moderate portions and ensuring you don’t over-do the more calorie-dense foods, as ultimately calories do count.

6. EXERCISE.

Daily activity is one part of the equation, and the other is including periods of more structured intense activity. This should cover both resistance and cardio training and ideally you should aim to spend around 45 – 60 mins, 3 – 5 times a week on this element.

7. RECOVERY.

Yes, rest is encouraged! Ensure you have adequate rest between intense training sessions. A common error is going too hard at the outset and putting yourself off or causing injury. Plan your workout days in advance and stick to it, letting yourself recover but staying active. Active recovery is great and can include walking, cycling, swimming etc. to help keep the blood flowing through the muscles and actually ease out any soreness from a previous session. Getting enough sleep is also crucial: 7-9 hours a night is optimal. Your training will suffer if you are not getting enough sleep, as will your mood and energy levels.

8. STRESS AND TIME MANAGEMENT.

You need to prioritise your health in order to effectively deal with all that life throws at you. Once you have acknowledged that you are going to make this a priority it is then time to look into how you can achieve this. Are there things cluttering up your life? Are they all really that important? Could you spend 30 mins less time on the internet or watching TV in the evenings and use that time to squeeze in a training session? Can you delegate certain tasks? We often feel that ‘to get a job done properly I might as well do it myself’ but sometimes we need to let it go, allow someone else to ‘learn’ to do it for us! It may not be perfect, but it will free you up some time!

9. CONSISTENCY.

No matter what nutrition or training plan you choose to follow, you will get success if you stick with it, so long as it is a quality approach and not some quick-fix fad. Any ‘magic bullet’ promise means you start out with the view that you will deprive yourself for a short period of time and then go back to ‘normal’. You will find that certain approaches work better for you than others, but you need to focus less on the detail and more on ensuring the changes are being implemented consistently and ongoing on a regular basis.

10. LOG AND REVIEW.

In order to find out if things are working, you need to take measurements at the start and then re-measure on a regular basis. Logging what you are doing is also very important. Logging food intake is one of the most important things you can do to ensure success as it provides you with some accountability, as well as an historical record so you can look back on things that worked well and things that didn’t.

So, to conclude, you are in the driving seat and it is up to you to take control! No plan or advice is worth anything if the plan or advice is not implemented, and only you can do that. So you need to decide to make changes and to visualise success, acknowledging the fact that there will be obstacles to overcome. The important thing is to take action – moving, no matter how slowly, in the right direction!

Exercise will increase your energy levels and reduce your stress levels, but at this very point in time, when you most need to reduce stress levels, the idea of taking on more tasks can seem daunting and likely only to increase stress levels further – it can become a catch 22, as you feel too stressed to fit everything in.

So how do you deal with this catch 22 situation? How do you make sure that adding an extra time commitment into your already busy life doesn’t increase your stress levels even further?

Firstly, you need to take some time out of your busy life, and assess where you are and where you are going. Goal setting and analysing what you want from life as a whole can often make us see life from a slightly different perspective. A lot of the things we are busy doing are not the ones that we really want to be focusing on, or the things that are most important to us. It is this that makes us stressed – that nagging feeling that we are really busy, but not managing to do the important things.

You need to make the commitment to becoming healthier and remind yourself what the results will be – it’s not purely about aesthetics and looking good, but it really is about being healthier and more energised. You need to prioritise your health in order to effectively deal with all that life throws at you and remind yourself that once you have made the time to fit in exercise, you will have more energy and be able to achieve more throughout the rest of the day.

Until your health and fitness is high enough on your priority list you will always find other things that get in the way.

When you have fully accepted its importance you can then set about making time – as this is the key, time is not something that is just found! Once you have acknowledged that you are going to make health and fitness a priority it is time to look into how you can create space in your life to fit it in.

Are there things cluttering up your life? Are they all really that important? Could you spend 30 minutes less time on the internet or watching TV in the evenings and use that time to squeeze in a training session? Can you delegate certain tasks?

We often feel that ‘to get a job done properly I might as well do it myself’ but sometimes we need to let it go, allow someone else to ‘learn’ to do it for us! It may not be perfect, but it will free you up some time!

Consciously looking at the way we respond to stressful situations can make a huge difference, too. Are you stressed because you are in a rush, or rushed because you are stressing? I practice a lot of yoga, and often have to remind myself when in traffic between clients that while a few good deep breaths won’t make the traffic move any faster, or get me there any quicker, it certainly will make me calmer and the journey more enjoyable – I can’t change the time I arrive by being stressed, but I can change the way I feel when I arrive!

Another important element is matching your exercise intensity to how you feel on a particular day. If you are truly frazzled, then a really intense session may just wear you out even further, so choose exercises that are more energising, or perform a strength training session with plenty of rest between sets, rather than an intense circuit style approach.

There are days when I know that I need yoga, rather than anything else, in which case that is what I will do. My body and mind thanks me for it and I ensure I am ready and raring to go for my next intense training session.

This is not an excuse to slack off just because you can’t be bothered, mind you, and you will often find that once you get started your energy levels increase!

Just get started with your warm up and have a plan, but be prepared to alter it slightly if need be.

On the subject of recovery, you must make sure you get enough. With the correct training plan, you do not need to exercise for hours every day to get results. You are far better off training intensely for 3 hour long sessions a week (or 4-6 shorter sessions) than training for hours on end at a mind-numbingly boring level.

This is perfect for the busy person in today’s hectic world as you can rest and recover, safe in the knowledge that you are actually increasing the efficacy of your programme by recovering properly.

Exercise is a vital tool for reducing stress and increasing energy, so it is worth making the time to fit it in. You will soon wonder how you coped without it!

We also need to take full responsibility for making these changes, and doing all we can to make them work for us.

Incremental changes to our diets and lifestyles mean that our new habits have a chance to become second nature. If you follow the newest ‘fad’ approach you will have some success while your willpower is involved, but these approaches do not stand the test of time as the minute you stop focusing on the diet you will slip up, going back to old habits.

This highlights another problem with relying on willpower, especially while following some faddy or extreme approach. By definition you are thinking about your diet a lot more than you would otherwise – so you are essentially tormenting yourself with your deprivation! Being aware of ‘being on a diet’ all the time, which is needed if you are going to succeed with willpower, means that your chances of success are immediately lowered – it is much easier if you are not constantly focussed on what you can and can’t eat, and if you can just get on with your life and keep yourself busy.

So, how can you avoid this all-too-common pitfall?

Well, firstly, a long term approach is vital. You can force foods you dislike down you in the short-term in order to achieve a short-term goal, but where does this leave you in the long run? Still reaching for the old favourites, that’s where.

Instead, think about finding foods you actually do like and incorporating these into your life – this takes a bit of trial and error to get right, but means that the healthy foods you are eating are ones you really enjoy.

Then, who needs willpower? Over time you will proabably also find your tastes change and eventually the foods you used to eat or even crave no longer have the same appeal. Once you realise how good you feel when you eat healthier foods, junk really does lose its appeal.

We need to enjoy the changes we make to our lifestyle, although I would also add that change can be hard and uncomfortable. We need to persevere with certain things even if we aren’t that excited about them immediately, adapting our approach to find ways to make the changes as enjoyable as possible.

For example, we all need to up our vegetable and fruit intake to 5 – 10 portions a day, but for many this is extremely hard. At first you may resist, insisting that this nutritional programme cannot work as you absolutely hate vegetables. But there are universal laws of good nutrition, of which vegetables are one! The solution is, again, in the long term approach. So try out several different methods to find something that works for you. When it comes to eating your veggies you may realise that while you hate boiled broccoli you love it when it’s added to a stir-fry with herbs, spices and garlic, for example. If you struggle with this side of things, you will need to begin experimenting with new foods and methods of preparation: you can try stir-fries, mashes or purees (mashed cauliflower and / or butternut squash is a fab alternative to regular white potato mash for example!), roast veggies (roasting sweet potato or celeriac ‘chips’ instead of regular chips!), various salads, exotic foods, new combinations, spices and herbs.

You can always find healthier alternatives to your favourites and all these small replacements can add up to big improvements to your diet as a whole – which will be evident in both your energy levels and your waistline!

For any plan to succeed for you in the long term you need to have the freedom to make choices. It is freedom to choose that empowers you, and as you learn which choices are going to support your goals and which are going to take you further away from achieving them. Rather than focusing on deprivation and willpower, focus instead on how you can make yourself feel great, while eating foods you enjoy and that take you a step closer to your achieving goals.