Well we did a Tuesday thoughts rather than a Tech Tuesday this week, having a chat about how to stay on track after a big event. With a few big things having wrapped up in the last few weeks its important that we stay focused and dont fall off the wagon!

What are you doing to achieve your fitness goals? While showing up to the gym is a great start, it is only 50% of the challenge. To achieve your goals this may involve staying back and putting the extra work in after classes or you may have to work on the small details outside of the gym. Once you have established what goals you’d like to achieve, you should create a checklist that you can use to check off certain behavioral or training markers to give you the best shot of achieving them. If your goals involve something like weight loss or muscle gain, your checklist should include things like sleep tracking, nutrition tracking and putting your best effort into your training. If your goals are related to a certain movement such as getting a new personal best or getting your first pull up, some extra work has to be done. Doing extra accessory work to build strength in the muscles required for the movement, working on mobility and working on the technique of the movement should all be a part of the checklist to help you lift that heavier weight or do that movement you’ve never been able to do. Your checklist will make you accountable for whether or not you will achieve your goals. If you don’t achieve the goal you wanted you can look back and see if you did those extra little things that would have helped you along the way. Don’t just sit back and hope that your training will be enough.

Coach Christian!

Healthier Eating

Eating well is a lifestyle. Healthy eating isn’t about eating perfectly, it’s about making more nutritious choices most of the time.

You may think that eliminating certain foods from your diet is the way to shed extra kilograms, however, generally speaking, restrictive diets are not sustainable, and any weight loss on these diets tends to rebound within a few months.

One piece of chocolate cake won’t make you fat or unhealthy. Over-indulgence of said cake could over time though. So sure, perhaps you need to set some boundaries with trigger foods until you’re ready to enjoy them in moderation.

When we get too strict with our rules of what we can and can’t eat, we risk suffering from cravings which usually leads to over-indulgence. Give yourself permission to eat your ‘crave food’ in moderation. This in turn can lead to fewer cravings because you know you can eat all foods anytime you want.

For me personally, falling off, or rather NOT falling off the wagon of good healthy eating has been a real battle. If I ‘cheated’ one day, I would find myself thinking, “Oh well, the whole weeks wrecked now. May as well eat whatever”. Once I changed my attitude towards that piece of chocolate, or glass of wine, and allowed myself ‘guilt free’ indulgence occasionally, my cravings started to change. More often than now, now I’ll crave one of the healthy snacks or shakes that I have been making, rather than the sugar-rich treats I would have normally gone for.

Eating ‘clean’ isn’t hard. It’s not really much more expensive than buying processed foods either. You do need to set some time aside for prep, but meals don’t have to be complicated or fancy.

Someone once told me that the key to ‘clean’ eating was to shop around the outskirts of the supermarket. Don’t bother going down the aisles. Recently I cleaned up my diet (again!) and this motto is pretty spot on. Fruit, Veg, the deli, meats, frozen foods (not the pizzas and pies though!). Occasionally I venture into an aisle for some canned goods, or almond or soy milk.

There are so many resources out there with recipes and tips – you just have to jump online! But remember, what works for someone else might not be the best for you. You won’t know until you start though. Start with small changes – don’t try to overhaul your whole diet on the first day. Change, or make, one habit. Then start on the next. Talk to people about how you’re changing your lifestyle. This makes you accountable and might help to keep you on track.  

But most of all – enjoy the beautiful good, REAL food! Easy doesn’t have to mean plain or boring. Use spices! Don’t be afraid of trying a food you have no idea how to cook. Google knows how to cook everything…usually in many different ways!

Give it a go…Your whole being will thank you for it. Your training, your recovery, your general well-being.

Bon Appetite!

Coach H x

Coach Noonan wrote an article for Sunshine Coast Health and Fitness check it out!