Health & Fitness in the Winter
by Greg Edelston, Personal Trainer, Sports Masseur & Rowing Coach
Here comes another piece of journalism to make you feel bad about all the excesses of the festive season. It is my job to make you feel guilty about the mince pies, puddings and gluttony (which is a cardinal sin).
The psychic in me tells me that your New Year's Resolution is a diet and the cruel PT in me tells me to tell you that you will have to go on that diet forever! No I am not crazy nor cruel, just the deliverer of hard fact.
You want to be slim for a couple of weeks – go on a crash diet. If you want to be slim forever – you will have to change what you eat forever. And make friends with exercise. Yes that unpleasant activity.
Sadly when more and more people are not just chubby, not just fat, but clinically obese, this article, and others like it, are all the more important. We get confusing messages, from magazines with unhealthily thin models, with bodies next to impossible to attain, and then all this food, delicious food, around us we are being pulled two ways. And without wanting to sound like a Blairite spin doctor – the middle way is the better way and also the achievable way.
Realism is what is needed. Find a couple of rules that work for you individually and a couple of rules that work generally. We are all individual and one-rule-suits-all does not work. If, like me, you need chocolate every day, have it before 11 o'clock, then you will have a day's activity to burn it off. Whatever you do. don't have it at night. It goes to the stomach and stays there, typically forever.
Another rule that I have found to work, although it takes a while to get into the habit of, is not eating after 7pm at night. Here comes the biology. You go to bed lighter having digested most of what you have eaten resulting in a better nights sleep, less likely to suffer from heart burn, you wake up easier as you are a little hungry, you start the day with a breakfast (now I have got you eating that next to impossible breakfast), your digestive system has a ‘shunt' and you dispose of waste products, about 500g. You will now feel lighter for the day, not be carrying what is essentially a toxin, have more energy to burn. When you go to bed you may well have eaten the same amount of calories but will have burnt off extra calories and slowly get lighter. Combine this simple rule with a bit of exercise, 3x 40 min Cardio sessions a week and you are guaranteed to get slimmer an easier way.
Most people will join a health club this month and start going for a while. The sad thing this is a false economy. And a cynical ploy by most the health clubs to exploit your guilt. You can waste in excess of a £1000 a year. Is it not far better to pay for a course of PT sessions, have exercise tailored to suit your needs and achievable goals and after that course you can have a few top-up sessions to keep you going and motivated? You may end up paying a bit more, but you will get the exercise done, you will get the results you want, you will have somebody to giggle with, rather than perpetuating that cycle of feeling bad because no matter what you will probably not get on the cover of that magazine.
So I wish you good luck, be realistic, and may you all have a healthy 2007.
[Greg can be contacted on 07814 004 619 or greg@edelston.eu] |
