Tag: gym

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5 Simple Steps to Achieve Fat Loss

Considering food is such a huge part of our health and wellbeing, the majority of the population know very little about what they’re eating. What we consume can have a huge impact on not just how our body looks, but also how it performs.

When I started really getting into fitness, I was performing high intensity workouts about six times per week. I was probably burning about 400 calories each session. It felt like I was doing a lot so when I didn’t see any massive changes in my body composition, it was pretty demotivating. Why? Because of my diet.

I was eating what I considered to be ‘clean’ and ‘healthy’. It genuinely was those things, full of fruit, veg and good nutrients, but at the end of the day it wasn’t what my body needed if fat loss was my goal.

At the end of the day, fat loss is very simple. We love to over complicate it. This plays directly into the hands of corporations who use this to make money off us with bullsh*t like skinny teas, hunger supressants, weird stomach wrap things and weight loss programmes. This is because people what the simple and easy route.

The route is absolutely simple, but I’m not gonna say it’s easy.

The answer? Two words – Calorie deficit.

That’s it.

If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’ll explain. In order for our body to lose fat, we need to be consuming less calories that we are burning off. We can create a deficit in two ways: decreasing food, increasing exercise. For me, the best thing to do is impliment both these methods, that way you won’t have to go to the extreme in either.

That’s why I recommend EVERYONE should track their eating at least for some period of their lives. It’s a pain in the ass, yes. But you will be surprised at the amount of calories you’re consuming and that’s the reason you can’t loose fat.

This doesn’t mean you should suddenly cut your calories by 1000 and stay like that for a while. Not only is this not sustainable, your metabolism will be screwed and your body won’t be able to burn fat as it will be clinging onto it as it goes into survivial mode.

1. Find out how many calories you should be consuming

You can do this through a calorie calculator online. All you need to put in is your weight, height, age, how much you exercise and how active you are. This all affects how many calories you burn each day.

These are the various ways we burn calories:

  • BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate): This is how much we burn by just our organs keeping us alive
  • Physical activity: Exercise, walking, moving
  • TEF (Thermic Effect of Food): Our body burns calories digesting our food! That technically means the more we eat, the more calories we burn in this category!
  • NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis): Fidgeting, small movements, even things like using our hands when talking etc. Increase this by moving more during the day! When people dramatically cut their calories, the amount of NEAT calories we burn tends to go down as we will subconsiously move less to reserve energy.

2. Find out how many calories you should be consuming for your deficit

The calculator will give you a ‘maintainance’ calorie figure. This is how much your body needs in order for it to stay in a place where there will be no weight gain or fat loss. Calculate around 10-15% of this number, and subtract it from the maintainance. That’s how much you should be consuming for fat loss.

For example, if someone’s maintainance is 2,000 calories, 10% of that is 200. Therefore, they should be consuming 1,800 calories per day for fat loss. In my experience, the best thing to do is help boost that deficit a wee bit more by upping your exercise. It doesn’t have to be anyting too dramatic.

3. Download a food tracker such as myfitnesspal and track EVERYTHING

The best thing to do is use it with your normal diet for a week. Then you’ll see how much you’ve been eating, what the problem meals are, what’s good and what’s bad.

Remember to track things like coffee, soft drinks, cooking oil and juice. These tend to rack up your calories so much so be wary!

4. Allow yourself cheat meals/days!

Unless you’re a physique competitor wanting to step on stage, you’re not going to want to make your life revolve around your calorie deficit and myfitnesspal. Allow yourself to be flexible and go over your calorie allowance once a week or so. The key here is to not get a taste for the binge and ending up consuming 4000 cals in one day and completely undoing that week of counting. This ABSOLUTELY has to be done every once in a while, I know that very well! But if you’ve got a nice dinner, or social event coming up, don’t feel guilty about the few extra calories, and don’t bother tracking.

I find it so much easier to stay sane and stay motivated this way. Otherwise it just seems like an endless road of forbidden foods.

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5. Figure out what foods work best for you and what you enjoy the most!

This is the best thing about counting your cals to lose fat. A lot of people refer to it as flexible dieting. If it fits in your calorie allowance, go for it! No food is a ‘sin’ or any of that rubbish. If you want something higher cal, then you’ll just have to have lower cal things thorughout the day.

It very much takes a while to get into a routine of it and find the foods that work best for you, that taste the best and keep you feeling full. I’ve never felt hungry when I’m in my calorie deficit, and I never feel like I’m missing out on things.

Once you get into the swing of things with this – I would then recommend looking closer at your macronutrients. That’s a post for another day 🙂

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Best Exercises for Toning Up Arms

No one wants to feel uncomfortable when wearing a sleeveless top, especially when summer is just around the corner. Obviously, I would love for everyone to feel comfortable in their skin. but I understand that some may want to focus on improving the physical appearance of their arms to increase confidence.

I think most people understand that we can’t ‘spot reduce’ fat. Meaning we can’t choose to lose fat in one area over others. When you start losing fat, the chances are it’ll reduce on the areas you’re not all that bothered about first, and sometimes our arms and stomach can be the most stubborn areas.

However, so long as we are in a state where we are losing fat (a caloric deficit, achieved either by dieting or introducing more exercise), we can use weighted excercises to build muscle and create a more toned appearance.

Here are some of my favourite arm exercises, targetting your biceps and triceps:

Skull Crushers

Use either a dumbell or an EZ bar. Keep your upper arms as still as you can. For even more of a burn, on the last rep, hold at the bottom of the movement and pulse for a few counts.

Assisted Dips

Some of you may not be aware that tricep dips can be performed on the assisted pull up machine. Remember, the lighter the weight you put the pin in, the more challenging it will be. Really focus on the mind muscle connection to your triceps here and generate force to push yourself up.

Cable Pushdown

Use either the straight bar or the rop attachment here and attach it to the cable machine above your head. Starting with your ars at a 90 degree angle and keeping your elbows tucked in, push the attachment down to your thighs. Make sure you control on the way back up to your starting position and keep that constant tension on the muscles. If you really want a good burn out, encorporate ‘drop sets’ here. Meaning, start at a weight you can perform for 10 reps, then drop the weight down and perform more reps until you hit failure. You can drop again if you want to push yourself even further.

Hammer Curl

One for the biceps here – hold the dummbells upright, rather than the traditional underhand grip. Start with the dumbells at the side of your thighs. Keeping your elbows tucked into your sides and keeping the upper body as still as possible, contract your biceps and perform one rep by bringing the weights towards your shoulders. Resist the want to drop the weights quickly down to starting position and control the downwards movement.

Cable bicep curl

Again, you can use either the rope of bar attachment for the cable machine here. This time we are position the cable attachment at the lowest point on the machine. Plant your feet into the ground shoulder width apart and pull the cable up to your thighs with your arms extending. Then, pull the cable towards the chest, keeping the elbows tucked in and upper arms as still as you can. You can incorporate drop sets in here too!

Push ups

Either position your hands wide to target the chest and biceps more, or adopt a more narrow hand position to force the triceps to take more of the load. If you struggle with push ups, try as many as you can off your feet before dropping to your knees to complete the set. Everytime you do them, try to push one more rep off your feet than you did in the previous session. If you focus and practice, the strength will come!

If your goals include transforming your arms and shedding fat, drop me an email at josephinechristie14@gmail.com. I am based at Brighton London Road Pure Gym and can get you booked in for a consultation to see how we can smash these goals 🙂

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Why Every Woman Should be Using the Weights Area

I am a firm believer that everyone should use resistance training in their day-to-day regime. Even more so for women, as a lot of us females still seem unsure of the weight area.

It’s not surprising either, it can be a pretty intimidating place and if you aren’t sure on technique, you’re probably even less likely to venture into these new territories.

This results in way to many women spending hours in the cardio areas of the gym. The treadmills, steppers, cross-trainers and bikes are always going flat out, but is this giving you the body you want? The chances are the answer is no. This is for a number of reasons. Although you may be burning those calories on the machine, is your nutrition matching your goals?

Furthermore, cardio won’t do much in terms of changing your physique. A reduction in fat will occur if you’re in a deficit, but if you are really looking to change how your body looks and your proportions then you need to be encorporating weight training.

Here’s why I want every women to be in the weights area in the gym:

1. To build muscle and your physique

I’d like to think the whole illusion about having muscle makes you ‘bulky’. There’s a huge amount of fitness instagrammers now who have legitimately built their body through weight-training and nothing about them looks bulky or masculin.

In fact, if your fitness goal is to improve your physique then weight training is going to get you that result. By training for muscular hypertrophy (the growth in muscle mass), you will start to see your body changing so long as you follow the correct nutritional guidance to align with your goals.

When training for hypertrophy, rep ranges of 6-12 should be performed with the last set reaching failure or almost failure. In addition to this, a suitable load should be adopted to aid the increase in muscle mass. For beginners, load is not as important. Form and technique should be nailed and perfected first before increasing weight.

2. Improve proportions or the illusion of your proportions

I’m sure the idea of bigger shoulders or a wider upper back probably sounds off-putting for some women. However, this will help you achieve that ‘hourglass’ figure a lot of women are seeking. Bigger lats, delts and glutes will help give the illusion of a smaller waist.

3. Improve metabolism

A cardio workout and a high intensity weight workout will probably burn around the same calories by the end of the session. However, weight training will have a greater effect on our EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). This is essentially like an ‘afterburn’ effect, where our bodies will still be working to burn calories even up to 36 hours after our training session. We still get this after a tough cardio session, but pushing ourselves in a weight training session will really elevate this. Thus, improving metabolism and allowing us to burn more fat, or, even better, increase our food intake!!

4. Get stronger

This is the best thing about lifting. I think a lot of women get into strength training in order to improve their physique. However, being able to perform lifts you never thought you could is an incredibly rewarding, motivating and empowering feeling. Not only does being strong and being able to put a number (in kgs) on it feel good, it is incredibly beneficial to our bodies. Improving strength means we are not only building a body we want just now, but we are forming a body that will carry us through life. Sounds deep, but it’s amazing!

5. Improve confidence

You may get an improvement in confidence through a physical change in your body, but the empowering feeling of weight training will definetely factor in. We all know we get good endorphins from exercising, and these positive feelings have such a huge impact on mental health. If you are feeling more positive in your mind, you will feel more confident not just in the gym, but transfer it to other parts of life.

I don’t want this to be ALL about how we look – but that’s the reason the majority of people are in the gym right? Therefore, that’s why I feel the need to highlight the benefits of this style of training. I honestly could not think of anything worse than dragging myself to the gym to perform endless sessions on the cardio machines. Cardio has so many benefits and it is important to keep your fitness levels up to improve cardiovascular health. However, a change in body composition will be achieved a lot more effectively by encorporating weight training.

If you are eager to get started with learning some new styles of training to reap all these benefits, my Ladies Lifting class is the perfect place to start!

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5 Tips for Students Improving Physique at University

The liklihood is that the gym is at the bottom of your priorities when it comes to being a student. Deadlines, reading, socialising and clubs/socities take up the majority of your time at uni.

Obviously, your course work should come first, but I found that sticking to my training programme whilst at uni helped my productivity. Especially in my fourth year, when I was only in classes a few hours per week, it was important to keep myself motivated and keep to a routine. For me, this routine was getting up nice and early, hitting the gym, studying until dinner time then giving myself the evening off. In some ways it kept me sane!

I’ve put together a few tips on how to juggle uni and fitness:

1. Schedule in your gym sessions at the beginning of each week

Write out in your calender in your phone when you’re going to go to the gym. If you know when this will be, it will be easier to schedule the rest of the week and figure out what you need to complete course work wise in order for you to fit your gym session in. This hopefully will also prevent too much procrastination as each day will have a structure

2. Be strict with your rest times and know what you’re going to do each session

In order to give yourself most of the day to work on your studies, be strict with the time you spend in the gym. Time your rest periods to make sure you don’t waste too much time between sets. By having a set plan of what you’re going to do before you go to the gym, you won’t waste time deciding on what to do when you’re there.

3. Be wary of meal deals and pre-prepared food.

When I was at uni, the easiest thing for me to do was grab something quick from Sainsbury’s round the corner. The rubbish thing is that most of the sandwiches/wraps are suuuuper high calorie and not the most nutritious. If you have time to prep some meals to take with you to uni you will not only stick to your nutrition goals, but save some cash too!

4. Get a coach

In order to get the most out of your training and your plan, having a coach will help you to reach your goals so much faster. Not only will a PT motivate you and hold you accountable, but they will be able to tailor a programme that works for you training wise and time wise. Whilst I was at one of my busiest times at university, writing a dissertation, finalising projects for my final year, I began a cut. My coach at the time helped me through this and we got fantastic results (below)!

Being a former student, I completely understand the financial restrictions surrounding getting a coach. That’s why I’m offering students a monthly package to help reach your goals. Train in two 1-1 sessions per month with me in the gym, have weekly online check ins, nutritional guidance, and regular measurements to ensure you are progressing as best as possible.
All for a reasonable £100 per month 🙂

5. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep and stress levels are kept to a minimum

This is easy said, but it’s so important to keep calm when you have all these assignments coming in! Find something that helps you keep mentally positive when you may feel like you’re being drowned in work. For me, I managed to maintain a healthy mindset by ensuring I did enough work during the day so I didn’t have to do work after 7pm. I then spent my evenings cooking myself a nice dinner and binge watching some series.

My mind doesn’t focus particularly well in the evening anyway so trying to force myself to do work at this time would just leave me frustrated and stressed. If this sounds like you, make sure you get up early in the morning and make the most out of your day. Set yourself deadlines such as ‘I’m going to write 1000 words today’, or ‘I’m going to submit this assignment by late afternoon’ to motivate yourself to not procrastinate.

If you are someone who prefers to work at night, try not to stay up super late and make sure you are getting around eight hours of sleep per night. Stress and lack of sleep will both stall your progress when it comes to your physique, so help your body the best you can so it can give you the results you want!

But lastly, please don’t restrict yourself too much!!!

The chances are, you’re only going to be a student once. Although I was cutting in my last semester at uni, in no way did this stop me from going out at least once a week and treating myself when it came to food! Don’t miss out on any experiences just because you’re focused on your physique. It’s all about balance and by not overly restricting yourself, you will be in a better mindset on days when you are sticking to plan!