After many years trying different protein supplements, and I have tried a number of them!, I have found one thing in common with the majority and nearly all Protein powders out there on the market. Its one thing which most of us wouldn’t even think twice about putting into our bodies; and although there is a lot of controversy on it and a lot of studies to show the adverse effects artificial sweeteners like Aspartame have on the body, most of us are still none the wiser.

Until last year I hadn’t really considered this could be a problem for all of us fitness fanatics, I knew Aspartame having some adverse effects but was totally fooled by the label    I had run out of my then regular protein that I had been using and recommending to my clients. The next day while walking past a Hollands and Barretts, I noticed they had a good deal on for there whey protein and decided to check it out. After a minute or two of reading its contents, came across what I had mistaken for a natural sugar (Sucralose) and noticing it that on the front it had in big bold letters, NO ASPARTAME (a toxin used as an artificial sweetener) I thought great!  no aspartame, I’ll try it out.

I got home after training my last client that night and remembered I had this new protein to try. I opened it and was immediately hit  an intensely sweet vanilla smell, It smelt beautiful and have to say it tasted really good too, Bonus!.

I went to sleep that night with a dull pain and odd feeling in my head, and thought nothing of it. In the morning it was just about gone and thought nothing more it, until later that day when I had another protein shake and shortly after, I started getting the same dull head pains and odd feeling in my head. I stopped taking the protein for a few days and the dull head pains stopped completely, and a few days later tried some again to see for sure if this is what was causing  it, sure enough the same pains returned. I checked the ingredients to see if it might something in my recent engineered whey protein purchase and saw I the word sucralose, not sucrose.

So what is Sucralose?… I still thought it was a natural sugar!, at least its name suggests it. I did my research and this is what it is.

Sucralose is sugar that has been chemically combined with Chlorine, and as a result makes it 600 times sweeter than ordinary sugar(this is perhaps the reason my Protein smelt so strong)

I may not know everything there is to know about nutrition and I am all for health supplements tasting good, but I know that Chlorine is not usually part of healthy my staple diet and neither am I accustomed to my food or protein supplements causing me odd dull pains in my head.

Avoiding Aspartame and Sucralose is not as easy as you might think, especially since the health and fitness industry use them in nearly all products these days as a low cost(to them) and low calorie chemical alternative to natural sugars, I suggest you do your own research on it an decide for yourself.

Keeping healthy and sharing my knowledge of better ways stay healthy goes hand in hand with setting a good example in my profession, for my clients and the people around me and I hope this blog helps you too.

I speak to a lot of people each month, and it seems that one of the least know vital information for losing fat and building and maintaining muscle is pre and post workout nutrition.

Most commonly people just don’t have the information necessary to getting those results wanted from training, well I hope to shed a little bit of light on this; at least on this one aspect of muscle building and maintaining the muscle you have.

Doing intense early morning exercise for example, it seems there are quite a few of us who do this, but don’t eat anything before exercising and who train for 45-60 minutes, shower, change and then eat. meaning they have gone without food for between 7-11 hours.

“Well, whats wrong with doing that?”

Don’t get me wrong, if you have no goal in maintaining the lean muscle you have or building muscle, this is certainly no problem. But for those wanting to lose weight or gain muscle it can mean the difference in achieving your goal fast and effectively or struggling for years to keep the muscle you are working so hard for.

The reason?… if you are trying to build muscle, you will be doing resistance training of some sort, you will not have eaten for up to 10-11 hours since your last meal the night before. which means your muscles will have a very limited store of energy for intense training or resistance training.

What has muscle got to do with fat loss?

The more lean muscle you have, the more energy you use(burn more calories) loss fat faster.

It comes down to this, because the body runs like a machine (that is to say it needs fuel to run it), okay everybody knows you have to eat to survive. But what happens when you have used all your muscles energy supplies during a workout and you haven’t eaten for hours before and after your workout?

Well your body is pretty smart and knows it better get some energy from somewhere fast to keep you going, and it does this by breaking down the muscle. That’s right, it breaks down the muscle in order to have a source of energy.

“why doesn’t it break down the extra fat I have?”

Two reasons- the first is sort of “starvation” mode. A defense mechanism, thought to have evolved during hunter / gatherer times. As the body doesn’t know where its next meal is coming from, it becomes super efficient at making the most of the calories it gets from food and drink.
But once those are used it does this by protecting its fat stores, and using lean tissue or muscle to provide it with the calories it needs. This directly leads to a loss of muscle tone, which in-turn lowers your metabolic rate. The body therefore requires fewer calories to keep it going over, and fat loss slows down.

And second reason is that it easier for the body to break down muscle tissue than it is to break down fat, which is why the muscle tissue is normally the first to be broken down for energy

The solution is to aim to eat 6 meals per day and alternate main meals with smaller snack meals.
Combining good fats with every meal is not only good from a nutritional point of view, but it will also help make the protein a more sustained release, so you feel fuller for longer.

Since your body will be receiving food more often, your metabolism has to shift gears from burning calories slowly to burning them at a faster rate. By including protein with every meal, you will protect your muscle tone, and prevent it from being broken down for fuel.

I hope this sheds some light on the subject and hopefully this helps you achieve your goals faster.

The subject of stress is to most people very real in today’s world of work, work, work and quite frankly work some more, but because I get to  train people every day, there is another factor I have observed other than my clients goals being achieved.

And that is that training and exercise always seems to have a positive effect and some sort of anxiety or stress relief, turns out that this connection between stress relief and exercise has been known for over 60 years. Whether you’re the president of a Fortune 500 company, a Kindergarten teacher or a construction worker, you have stress to deal with.

But you don’t have to let it get the best of you, here are some links of the some of the most recent scientific research.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/benefits-of-exercisereduces-stress-anxiety-and-helps-fight-depression

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/Whybeactive.aspx

Just to give you an idea, the majority of those people at the very top of the fortune 500 companies keep up with a  regular exercise schedule.

Yes its true, not everyone owns a fortune 500 company but most of us have stress in our lives, battling stress in your day-to-day routine, well you can stop pulling your hair out and get back to living a more relaxed life.

How can you turn your stress-filled life on its head?

With one of the best weapons against stress: exercise.

Because every time you exercise, you increase your body’s production of endorphins.

In case you didn’t get the memo, endorphins are responsible for those good moods you get in after a race or the euphoria you feel while chomping down on a piece of chocolate.

However, before you grab a piece of chocolate and skip the gym, remember the end result of each and choose which one will help you battle stress in the long run. (Hint: It’s not the chocolate.)

Best Bets: Now that you know exercise reduces stress, you may be wondering which exercises will be most likely to keep you from banging your head against the wall. Ready to learn what exercise you should be performing as you wage war against stress? Here it is: whatever you enjoy doing.

That’s right – any and all exercise you perform helps you fend off the effects of stress. So whether you enjoy jogging, lifting weights, playing basketball, practicing ballet, swimming, yoga, rowing, or boxing, simply getting involved in your exercise of choice is sure to help reduce your stress.

We have all heard at one point in our lives “eat a good well balanced diet and you will stay healthy” or “You are what you eat”, perhaps those lines have been used so much that we sort of shrug our shoulders and say “yes, your right”.
But do most of us know what a well balanced diet is?
And what do people really mean when they say, you are what you eat?

Part of my profession is knowing the facts and fibs of dieting myths, educating people on “what is this balanced diet that everyone keeps talking about?”. In any goal of training whether it be for fat loss, muscle gain or tone, nutrition is 1 of 3 most important factors and can make losing fat or gaining muscle incredibly hard especially if you have been mislead or educated wrongly into eating the wrong things.

Here’s in example for you and saturated foods – If you accidentally put petrol into you cars engine and your car happens to run on Diesel.
Well, what happens?
Yep! it can’t burn the petrol fuel or maybe it might be able to burn a little, but that engine was never designed to be able to burn petrol fuel.

So what happens to the petrol? It stays in the cars engine.
And it’s the same with our bodies, some foods we are just not designed to be able to burn or burn well, and your left with a tank of fuel your body struggles to burn.

It really does come down to when and what you are eating and drinking for real long lasting results.

Training my clients can sometimes be hindered by neck and back problems which although I can still train them, it does slow there progress down. Which is why I may refer clients (who I think will benefit) to the  Advanced Chiropractic Clinic, Three Bridges,West Sussex 01293 535381.

I have  previously had sports injuries and lower back pain, I have experienced first hand and have personally benefited from their chiropractic treatment.

I cannot stress how important a good well balanced diet will be for you, your body and your mind.  You are what you eat could not be more true!

Part of my professional training covered the facts and fibs of dieting myths!  I can offer you a full nutritional programme – combine this with exercise and you’ll be at your physical and mental peak.

Ready Meals.

Things you may not know about ready meals,
these may convenient but are high in saturated fats-(these are the fats the body finds tough to break down).

BASIC truth about eating…. is that if you eat a meal that contains more energy/calories than what energy your body needs at the time, it turns the remainder of what it hasn’t used into FAT.

WHY does it get converted into fat? The body stores it like an energy reserve. A survival mechanism.

And the ready meals…. for you ready meal fans, if you are wondering why you may be “storing more energy” then you used to before ready meals this may be a factor.

HELPFUL to avoid storing fat.

By eating 6 small meals evenly spaced through the day you can avoid having excess energy storage. (NO chocolate is not classed as a small meal)

Hope this had shed some light on subject.

Media Myths.

Myth 1. Healthy way to lose weight. Eating a low carbohydrate,  high protein diet.

• Truth – Low Carb, High Protein diets are not good for ones health, especially long term.
• By eating low carbohydrates and high protein, you will loose weight in the form of muscle as well as fat.
• You will also experience decreased metabolism from muscle loss
• Most people put weight back on very fast once they’ve completed their diet.

Healthy eating Guidelines

• 50-60% Carbs (1/2 Fruit and Veg & 1/2 wholemeal Bread, Pasta, Rice)
• 30% Fats (Milk and dairy, nuts, oily fish)
• 10-15% Proteins (meat, nuts, beans, fish, eggs etc.)
• Drink 1.5-2ltr water (NO coffee and tea are NOT classed as water)

The Mediterranean style eating is one of the best examples of healthy eating with mixed salads and olive oil with feta(or cheese), grilled fish and herbs etc.

Hope this helps some of you who had question marks (?) about these sort of diets.