Kk

Making something easy or accessible (or not) is how you change your snacking habits. We snack more and we snack more often because it’s easy and because it’s convenient, we snack before a meal, afterwards and sometimes instead. We snack all day and it very soon becomes a habit to snack and grab something we can crunch on all day long. With a few smart modifications we can change that.  Eat protein rich snacks. Quick snacks with lots of sugar will give you an instant energy boost but it won’t last and you’ll be coming from the sugar high within an hour feeling worse and being hungry again. High protein snacks (protein bars, nuts and yogurts) satisfy your hunger, longer and will not raise your blood sugar levels. They will keep you feeling full longer and keep you in a better mood all day long.  Never keep any commercial snacks in the house. If you want a bag of crisps you will have to come out and buy some. By making it inconvenient you are likely to not bother  and either...

We are split personalities, almost two beings living in one body. Biologically we have evolved to communicate to get our point across and make our intentions clear. To express where we stand, what we want or why we do something we only have to speak up… or so we think. In order for another person to understand what you are saying and what you want you both have to speak the same language or at the very least have a common framework for communication. When that is not the case, you have to find that common framework or you won’t be heard and be understood and you will not get the results you want. And that’s exactly the kind of miscommunication we have with our bodies 24/7.  Why? Because our body has ideas of its own. It has a prime directive, its main goal being to give us the best chances of survival. It has the same goal it had 200,000 years ago: to keep us alive. Just because our goals have recently changed, it has no way of knowing that which is why, within our own body we are ...

The question of how to lose fat and gain muscle is at the heart of almost every fitness activity. Before we get into what has to be done to achieve both at the same time it’ll help to understand the mechanisms involved. Weight loss and a reduction in body fat are the result of creating an energy deficit in the body. In other words when we eat fewer calories than we spend the body cuts into its stored fat reserves and we become leaner. Muscle gain and an increase in weight is the result of an energy surplus. This means we eat more than we burn but train hard enough for the body to use the surplus energy to repair muscle fiber and build new one. Because muscle is expensive to build and expensive to maintain the surplus is only used up to build muscle if we train consistently at a challenging rate. The description above is an oversimplification, mainly because the moment we start to have less calories than we need or more than we can use there are complex endocrinal processes that kick in...

There are many ways to measure your fitness and it doesn’t even have a lot to do with how you look, it’s always about what you are capable of. Your fitness levels are measured by your strength – your ability to do a greater consecutive number of an exercise, your speed – how quickly you can do this number and your recovery time, the time it takes you to recover before you can repeat it again. The latter perhaps is the main indication of your fitness, it is the ultimate test of your ability to handle it all. To find out what level of difficulty (I, II or III) you should be doing our routines on, perform three exercises (push-ups, sit-ups and basic burpees) one after another each for 60 seconds. Count how many push-ups, sit-ups and basic burpees you can do in 60 seconds and use the table below to find out the level that is suitable for you: ress the countdown button below to time yourself –  it’ll buzz when the 60 seconds are up .

All training is effective provided you show up, stay consistent and keep your routines challenging. It doesn’t matter how you choose to train, whether it’s bodyweight training, weight lifting or special gym equipment - all exercise works when you do it and do it regularly, upping the difficulty level every time it gets easier. That’s how you evolve and that’s when your body changes and your fitness levels go up. When it comes to training there really is no point in talking about which is “better”. There are just different ways to train for different purposes. Your circumstances and personal preferences also play a role. If you want faster results and you want to get bigger for the sake of getting bigger weight lifting is the way to go. If you find lifting boring, you don’t have weights or can’t afford a gym membership then bodyweight training is your light at the end of the tunnel. Both ways are perfectly valid, they are also non-exclusive – you can do both. Training with equipment doe...

Your muscles need recovery time to be able to repair, change and function properly before your next training session. Overworked muscles, damaged muscles and muscles that have been through hell and back will need some kind of downtime, but most of the time a good night’s sleep is all that is required. You can, in fact train every day, provided you don’t hyperload the same muscle groups and don’t put the same pressure on them several days in a row. That in fact, is the best and the fastest way to make fitness part of your lifestyle – just like brushing your teeth every morning. The problem with complete rest days, blank days on the calendar where you virtually do no exercise whatsoever, is that your mind wanders and if you are not into fitness already, you have higher chances of dropping out and giving up. Fitness is all in your head, that’s where it starts and that’s where it ends, one day without training, even a little bit of training – nothing hardcore, can potentially be the last d...

In the past, we used to only diet to lose weight so it was fairly straight forward, all we needed was basic scales to track our progress. These days we all know that just dieting isn’t enough, we also need to exercise to look and feel good, but exercise means muscle and muscle is heavy. The muscle mass is the gains you want but it makes scales all that more irrelevant when you want to see just how well you are doing. There are several ways to track your progress depending on your goals and how precise you want to be. If you only diet, you will not only lose weight, you will lose fat and muscle (which can have serious health consequences later on in life), and in this case you can use basic scales that only show you your general weight. If you exercise as well you will need to get more creative. Take weekly or daily photographs.  It’s not just a way to see how you are progressing but a way to stay motivated. Seeing yourself as you are can be a good reality check – after all, we all ...