Guest Posts

If you want to get skinny, you’ll never do it by gobbling down junk food. You can’t do it on celery and water either. The key to shedding pounds and finally getting into shape is understanding your food cravings and responding to them appropriately.

You crave junk food for a good reason. For one, you need protein, fat, and sugar to survive. If you deny yourself these necessities, your body will go into starvation mode and you’ll never lose weight.

The burgers, fries, potato chips, and snack cakes you crave don’t give you the right amount of protein, fat, and sugar. Instead, they use chemicals to fool your body into thinking you’re taking in these necessities.

It has been proven that junk food manufacturing companies spend millions of dollars figuring out just how to fool their customers into thinking they’re eating something healthy. The New York Times put out a report earlier this year that really broke down, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”.

Do you have too much stuff to do? Like you, every day I deal with Facebook posts, tweets, work and family. Finding time to go to the gym is getting tough! Well, don't worry. I have put together a workout you can do anywhere called the 2 Minute Workout that only takes, you guessed it, 2 minutes! This workout will get your blood pumping, increase your energy level, burn some calories and strengthen muscles.  Not a bad way to spend 2 minutes!

Perform each of the below exercises for 30 seconds .

Quad Hop

Get on your toes and place your palms on the floor facing each other. Keep your back parallel to the floor. Push up off the floor.

Quick video of me doing Quad Hops

Sky Kicks

Sit on the floor with your hands pointed toward your toes. Push up until your arms are straight. This is the starting position. Alternately kick your feet up and down.

Quick video of me doing Sky Kicks

Switch Backs

Congrats: you finally quit smoking! What happens next? Initially, your palate and metabolism will return to normal, meaning food will taste better but fat will be more difficult to break down. However, your lung capacity will gradually improve, giving you more freedom to enjoy physical activities. Once you quit smoking there are many ways to get back into shape and, of course, most of them involve some form of exercise. Have you ever wondered what makes a workout actually work? Why does working out make you healthier? Regular workouts help your body in a variety of ways. For starters, working out helps to promote:

  Healthier digestion

  Healthier circulation

  Healthier lung capacity

  Bone health

  Heart heath

  Increased cognitive abilities

  Better moods ​

  Reduced stress

  Healthy aging

  Weight management

One of the worst things about exercise is you just can't make time for it. If you don't have the right equipment and space to lose weight at home, you have to go to the gym.

Let’s say you work out for an hour at the gym. If you add that hour to the time it takes to get all your stuff ready, leave the house, travel to and back from the gym, get changed, have your shower… you’re easily looking at 2 hours.

With everyone being as busy as we are, who on earth has 2 hours a day to spare for exercise?

I mean it’s easy for athletes, sportspeople and celebrities to tone up - these people can dedicate their whole DAY to exercise. But for everyday folk like you and me with a busy life and hectic schedule, doing regular effective exercise and sculpting a chiseled body we can be proud of, can seem like nothing more than a pipe dream.

Yet new research by the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan, suggests that pipe dream may not be as unattainable as we previously thought.

The study took 94 adolescent boys and pided them into one control group, who went about life as usual, and one training group. The training group did 100 bodyweight squats a day, 4-5 days per week for 8 weeks. Each session took less than 10 minutes.

Do we have to rely on government health expenditures for an ageing society or is there something we can do to help?

Foam Roller Stretching - You've seen them laying around the gym, but do you know what they do?

History

A foam roller is exactly what it sounds like for those of you that have never seen one.  And foam roller stretching is the first step in any serious workout nowadays. It is the tool used to achieve myofascial release, a vital part of flexibility.  Everyone can benefit from improved flexibility - simply because it is a core element of physical fitness. 

As we humans become smarter as a species, we learn from injuries of others and we try to prevent them.  This forward thinking is something every athlete must keep in mind while performing.  Preventing injuries is not hard, and it’s not expensive either.  Since the beginning of time, back rubs and massages have been considered the ultimate medium to achieve relaxation.  And surprisingly it wasn’t until recently that they could be thought of as injury prevention.  Sports health science exploded in North America after seeing its success in European nations in the 60’s and 70’s.  It is common sense to stretch before any kind of physical exertion, but stretching only goes so far. 

Recent photos of the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton in a bikini and the criticism of actress Jessica Simpson’s ballooning pregnancy weight show us celebrities are under a huge amount of pressure. They are expected to stay healthy and fit, even when pregnant.

Weight gain during pregnancy is a desired and expected outcome. A steady gain of 1.5-2kg (3-4lb) per month through a controlled calorie intake is to be celebrated not feared. It is the growing of your body and baby. By maintaining your pregnancy weight gain within the healthy range you are ensuring the kilos will be easier to shift after the birth.

Unlike celebrities, most women do not have a personal chef, prenatal trainer and personal assistant to manage their weight gain or postnatal weight loss. However there are plenty of celebrity tips for maintaining a healthy body and losing weight after the birth. We’ve listed down a few tips which won’t cost you a thing and will keep you looking like a star.

In the last couple of years, my love for bodybuilding has grown enormously. I have experienced several cycles of "cutting" and "bulking", in which I have learned invaluable knowledge on how to lose weight. With a "cut" meaning to shed body fat. And a "bulk" meaning to gain weight and muscle. My experience has helped me debunk several myths on the topic of losing weight and preserving muscle mass when dieting.

During each "cut" (see photo below) I had the task of losing 30lbs and achieving a six pack, whilst maintaining my muscle mass. Losing muscle during this process was my biggest anxiety.

My First Cut

In order to achieve my goal, I lost weight gradually, aiming for 2lbs max per week. This slow weekly weight loss allowed me to keep my calories fairly high at 2,000, yet still burning fat.

I also kept my protein intake high, consuming one gram of protein per lb of bodyweight, spaced out evenly throughout the day, across six meals. This high protein intake approach was adopted to keep my body in a positive nitrogen balance, with amino acids constantly fueling my muscles. This was to prevent breakdown and loss of muscle tissue.

I need you to get off that treadmill and ask yourself an important question: is your current cardio training routine WORKING? Honestly. Day-in and day-out there are people, maybe like you, who spend their precious time using ineffective cardio techniques that produce very little results.

Well, those days are over. I’m going to explain 10 ways for you to improve your cardio training routine, and start seeing the results you deserve. Let’s get started.

1. WARM-UP

Seriously…? Warming-up is a way to improve your cardio routine? You better believe it. Without an effective warm-up you won’t be able to perform any routine at 100 percent intensity. If you’re going to train, then you should commit your body all the way!

The most effective way to warm-up before any exercise is through dynamic stretching. Do not static stretch before exercise because it does not probably prepare the muscles and joints for explosive exercise.

As a kid I’d drink milkshakes, eat pasta, meat and cookies all day every day and never could gain a pound. Fast forward to my late twenties and I found myself weighing in at 220 pounds (height: 6 ‘1 1/2’). 

Gaining weight gave me a sense of pride. After all, I endured years of being a twig, wiry yet able to blow over during a strong wind. The extra pounds rounded out my face, made me look older and it was fine with me. But then the health issues started and my only way out was a change in what I ate, how often I ate and how I began to approach food.

This is usually the case, with most people falling into bad habits and not worrying about the consequences until they stare you in the face.  For me the consequence was sciatic nerve pain the shot down my legs. The first two years down my right leg and the last two down my left. At times this could be crippling so my 220 pound weight was not going to fly anymore.